Crypto continues to stumble

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Their blood pressure racing, world investors are prepping for worst-case scenarios even as some vital signs seem stable.

Crypto traders, meanwhile, worry a momentum-devouring past couple of days spells a doomsday-reset for the sector.

U.S. GDP numbers drop on Thursday. While there are some economists, including those at Bank of America and Nomura, clanging recession gongs ahead of the seismic reveal, the consensus GDP forecast for the second quarter remains +1%, according to Dow Jones, per CNBC, noting that this would mean there has not been two consecutive quarters of GDP decline, which serves as a rule-of-thumb for generic, informal “yeah, we’re in a recession” characterizations, although there are more specific definitions of what constitutes a recession, and these are as yet unmet.

Tomorrow afternoon, the U.S. Federal Reserve will have its chance to weigh in on the question of whether a recession is clinically observable, smack in our faces, very close by or maybe not to be feared after all, with inflation data guiding their steps. Options include a "nuclear" 1% hike. A more likely scenario: the Fed raises rates by 0.75% and issues some vague utterances meant to leave the door open for more hawkishness in September, which isn’t great for risk assets but would not be unexpected.

Further, extra-hawkish-tinged talk of a longer tightening cycle could very well tank markets tomorrow; and then Thursday's GDP numbers could provide relief. Or this news sequence could turn some way that no one sees coming, possibly to the upside.

For now, stock futures are wavering, with Walmart and McDonalds reporting a mixed bag of results. Crypto, across the board, is bloodied.

Within the Top 100, just Radix (XRD), a smart contract creation platform, is green today. The 78th-largest digital asset gained 2% in 24 hours.

Bitcoin was barely clinging to $21,000 when we took a gander at the charts as of 7:30 a.m. (EST). We couldn’t look again.

At that time, BTC's 4.4% decline in 24 hours had come in the wake of news that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is stepping up its scrutiny of Coinbase. Bloomberg reported Monday that the SEC was investigating some of the tokens listed on the exchange. The surfacing of this particular probe coincides with parallel allegations that a former Coinbase executive conducted insider trading, and, taken together, appear to have frightened the market, said Cointelegraph.

Ethereum losing 15% in 48 hours certainly has lots of people spooked. TraderSZ is forecasting a return to $1,000 for ETH. As of 7:40 a.m., ETH was about $1,400, having declined 8% since this time yesterday.

Among Top 50 digital assets, ApeCoin (-11.5%) endured the most savage beating. Go ahead and tack on No. 51, Quant, a cross-chain interoperability project, to the ranks of the brutalized. QNT declined 16% in 24 hours; still, as of this morning, QNT was the second-most purchased coin on the Uphold platform.

Bitcoin failing to sustain bullish momentum has prompted at least one widely followed prognosticator to flag-up a new risk, one that until only days ago seemed to be in the rear-view mirror – BTC hitting fresh lows.

After the foremost crypto went below $21,500, a key break/make level, trader-pundit Tone Vays warned of a worst nightmare set up, per The Daily Hodl.

“We can trade down with the 50-period moving average on the daily scale another day or two but that’s probably it,” he said. “After that, would need to rally back to the 128-day moving average, and at that point, it really needs to go back up. Otherwise, I’m going to put these low targets of $14,000 back on the table.”

"Even on days when I'm broke as hell, I still stack," said ArizonanHodl, posting a $5 purchase of satoshis last week. "Feel free to join me."

BTC enthusiasts did just that, turning an off-the-cuff gesture underscoring dollar-cost averaging (DCA), into something of a global movement. In one week, a community-initiated "Bitcoin Stackchain" has amassed 7 BTC worth $160,000 (Cointelegraph).

According to the stackchain’s official GitHub, it began purely for “a bit of fun" but grew exponentially through the weekend.