The overall crypto market has stepped into a period of consolidation after clocking a record rally over the past days. Bitcoin on Monday, August 18 slipped by over two percent to trade around $115,130 on international exchanges. The asset rose to a new all-time high (ATH) last week, exceeding $124,000.
Speaking to CoinHeadlines, market analysts advised investors to proceed with caution as market winds turn choppy.
“BTC has seen high volatility over the past two days. The decline began with persistent selling pressure that dragged prices below $119,000. Although BTC briefly recovered toward $118,900, the move lacked strength and sellers quickly regained control, driving the price lower,” said the CoinSwitch markets desk.
The surge in Ether price also reflected a slowdown on Monday. The asset, that was trading at above $4,600 last week, is presently priced $4,245. In the last 24 hours, ETH fell by 4.6 percent to drop to its current price, showed data by CoinMarketCap.
“Such short-term pullbacks are natural after record highs and do not change the underlying value of the asset. Moreover, institutional appetite remains evident, with spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs recording their strongest weekly trading volumes of $40 billion with positive net inflows,” Edul Patel, the co-founder and CEO of Mudrex told CoinHeadlines.
Analysts are now eagerly awaiting the upcoming FOMC minutes slated for release on August 20 — that could set pace for the next leg of the market movement.
As of Monday, a majority of crypto assets reflected minor but notable losses. These include Ripple, Solana, Dogecoin, Tron, Cardano, Stellar, and Avalanche among others.
Chainlink (LINK) has notably surged over 10 percent over the last day to cross the mark of $24 — indicating that the investor interest is far from fading.
“We’re witnessing a strategic rotation into altcoins with solid fundamentals and real-world use cases. We interpret this as a sign of growing market sophistication, where participants are looking beyond just Bitcoin dominance and identifying value in projects that power key infrastructure like decentralized data services,” said Avinash Shekhar, Co-Founder and CEO, Pi42 in conversation with CoinHeadlines.
Market analysts are seeing this divergence in market momentum as healthy for the borader digital asset ecosystem — suggesting that apital allocation is becoming more discerning driven by utility, adoption, and network strength.
The overall valuation of the crypto sector also slipped to $3.9 trillion after touching $4.1 trillion last week.