Investing.com – Bitcoin’s price fell on Friday, moving further away from highs reached earlier in the week as concerns over high longer-term interest rates in the U.S. largely offset a key change in U.S. approval of exchange-traded funds that directly track Ether .

While Bitcoin continued to post some gains during the week, it returned to the $60,000 to $70,000 trading range seen for over two months. It also made up most of its weekly gains on Thursday and Friday.

fell 3.2% in the last 24 hours to $67,215.9 by 01:45 ET (05:45 GMT).

Ether price declines are shaping up to be a great week after SEC approval of spot ETF quotes

The world’s No. 2 token fell 1.2% to $3,748.97 on profit-taking.

However, over the last seven days, the token’s price has increased by 21%, mainly due to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s approval of applications from several major exchanges to list a spot Ether ETF.

SEC approval requests from Nasdaq, CBOE and NYSE for list of ETFs that will directly track the price of ether.

This step marked some progress toward final approval of the spot ETF for trading, although the SEC must now review applications from fund managers to list the spot ETF. The candidates include VanEck, ARK Investment Management and seven other issuers.

Rumors of SEC approval boosted Ether prices during the week, and the event itself resulted in short-term gains for the token.

Crypto Price Today: U.S. Interest Rate Concerns Curb Any Optimism

However, concerns about prolonged high interest rates in the US were a key point of pressure on cryptocurrency markets, especially as hawkish signals from the Federal Reserve showed growing concern among policymakers over persistent inflation.

Many Fed members said inflation would likely take longer to reach the central bank’s annual target of 2%, while minutes from the bank’s overdue April meeting showed some policymakers were even open to raising interest rates further.

This has caused investors to largely price in expectations for any interest rate cuts this year. According to .

High for longer interest rates bodes poorly for cryptocurrencies, given that the sector tends to thrive in markets with low interest rates and plenty of liquidity. Most token prices fell on this concept, and the rebound in the dollar also put pressure on the markets.

and decreased by 5.7% and 0.5%, respectively. Meme tokens and dropped 3.9% and 0.3%, respectively.