Bitcoin Gives Back Its Overnight Gain As Brent Tops $100

Bitcoin reversed an overnight advance during the U.S. trading session on Wednesday, erasing early gains and ending the midday New York window roughly where it had closed on Tuesday. The coin touched $79,701.36 in overnight trading, later trading between $78,308.42 and that high, and last changed hands at $78,591.04, roughly flat over the prior 24 hours and up modestly for the week.

Most large tokens weakened as spot markets traded cautiously ahead of key U.S. inflation reports. Thirty of the 123 largest non-stablecoin tokens were higher while 93 were lower. Ether traded around $2,497.54, down 0.2% on the day but up 4.1% on the week. XRP, Solana and BNB all fell on the day, with BNB still holding a 7.8% weekly advance. Total crypto market capitalization stood at $2.79 trillion on $87.67 billion of volume, with bitcoin dominance at 56.5%.

Zcash was a standout, rising after Digital Currency Group disclosed an in-kind transfer to Grayscale's Zcash ETP. The 8-K filed Tuesday reported that DCG acquired shares of the trust worth about $100 million in exchange for 85,705.32563297 ZEC. Zcash traded at $1,284.42, up 7.2% over 24 hours and 56.3% for the week, with trading volume of $1.73 billion and a market capitalization of $21.74 billion. The filing also said the ZCSH product has grown to more than $500 million in assets under management since listing on Aug. 25, and confirmed the launch of ZCSH options trading on NYSE Arca.

Market participants said positioning remained cautious ahead of Thursday's producer-price data and Friday's consumer-price report, both due at 8:30 a.m. ET and seen as key inputs ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting. Derivatives desks noted that options flows had favoured calls and that the sequencing of PPI before CPI could give the producer reading extra influence this week. Outside crypto, Brent crude topped $100 a barrel in morning trade at $100.74, while gold futures rose and S&P 500 futures were slightly lower.