This Week in Coins: Sparse News Extends Streak of Underwhelming Bitcoin and Ethereum Prices

It was the sixth consecutive week of underwhelming price performance by leading cryptocurrencies. There was a dearth of adoption or regulation stories, which for crypto fans and holders made this one of the slowest weeks in recent memory. 

Market leader Bitcoin (BTC) fell 1.1% over the last seven days and currently trades at $28,972. Its closest rival, Ethereum (ETH), fell 2.3% to change hands at $1,829, according to CoinGecko. 

Tether’s dollar pegged USDT is currently missing its mark and trades for $0.998247 despite the fact that the issuer’s recent quarterly report showed Q2 profits of $850 million, strengthening its total excess reserves to $3.3 billion.

Several big altcoins posted notable losses, including XRP, which fell 12% to $0.624960, Solana (SOL) dropped 9.8% to $22.64, TRON (TRX) dipped 8.1% to $0.077501, Litecoin (LTC) depreciated 9.5% to $82.37, Toncoin (TON) dropped 8.3% to $1.19, and Stellar (XLM) fell 14.4% to $0.136595.

Only one of the top thirty cryptocurrencies by market cap posted notable gains: Dogecoin rival Shiba Inu (SHIB), which blew up 14.7% over the week to trade at $0.00000965.

Shiba Inu’s price movement appears to have been catalyzed by news that the coin’s makers are shedding their memecoin reputation and introducing a new identity protocol to all apps on the ecosystem for increased security and privacy. 

The only major industry gossip in regulatory news this week broke on Monday, when a Financial Times report featuring Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong revealed that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had previously asked the exchange to delist all cryptocurrencies except Bitcoin. 

And in major institutional crypto news, software company MicroStrategy—the largest institutional holder of Bitcoin—reported a $24 million Bitcoin impairment charge in Q2. 

In contrast, Jack Dorsey’s Bitcoin-friendly payments company Block reported that $2.4 billion of its total $5.5 billion Q2 net revenue came from Bitcoin.