The price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are under pressure after the SEC's decision to delay applications for bitcoin spot ETFs for another 45 days. Bitcoin has fallen back below $26,000 after rallying earlier this week on Grayscale's (GBTC) victory in a federal appeals court. Yahoo Finance Markets Reporter Jared Blikre breaks down the story.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, Bitcoin and other crypto assets under pressure today after the Securities and Exchange Commission delayed its decision on spot Bitcoin ETF applications.

Jared Blikre is on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange tracking that for us and much more. Jared.

JARED BLIKRE: This just shows you how much we have to do on a summer Friday afternoon before Labor Day. These are filings that were largely expected. The SEC decided to postpone or deny the application that rolls them over into another day, it's mid-October for the next decision. But this regard a spot Bitcoin ETF, kind of the Holy Grail right now for Bitcoin lovers and Bitcoin bulls.

It was only a couple of days ago that we had that surprise, we had that decision. I don't know that it was a surprise, but it was a decision in the Grayscale versus SEC case, where they were suing to allow GBTC, that's a Grayscale Bitcoin Trust to convert to a spot Bitcoin ETF. That was approved. And so that could eventually go through, but that's going through in a different way because that has to do with the court system.

Now, all of this actually started a few months ago in the middle of June. June 15 was the day that BlackRock originally filed its application for its spot Bitcoin ETF. There was so much enthusiasm based on that, that we actually saw a huge multi-day rise in Bitcoin. There are a couple other things going on at the same time.

But everybody else who was going to file a spot Bitcoin ETF, they jumped on the bandwagon within the next couple of days. And we saw Bitcoin go from $25,000 to $30,000 and just above.

But given some of the disappointments that we've seen recently, we've seen that fall off quite a bit. I said earlier in the week right before the big Grayscale decision came out. We probably don't have another big catalyst until something changes materially with the Federal Reserve or we get to the halvening next year. And that has to do with the finite money supply of Bitcoin. So another story indeed.

Getting back to the main point, we're at about 25,000. 25,000 gives, there's not a lot of weight or there's not a lot of support under that until you get to about 20,000, 21,000, so we could definitely go lower.

But none of this really means that much in terms of price action between $20,000 and $30,000, $33,000 anyways. It's not until we push materially above, let's say 35,000, 40,000 that we can say we are out of the woods and probably emerging from the Bitcoin spring into the Bitcoin summer.

Notice that I believe we have already emerged from the Bitcoin winter. So enough on crypto there. I don't know if we're going to get any big decisions or anything else that will move the market next week, not maybe CPI. But that kind of brings me back to today. I said the Federal Reserve, if it change interest rate policy, that's going to affect all risk assets, not just Bitcoin.

And what we saw this morning was a rise in yields. I don't think this morning's report changes the game for the Federal Reserve. If anything, it takes some pressure off of them. But with regard to risk assets, summer is over. We know that we're entering September, October, that's when portfolio managers finally rejigger their portfolios from over the summer when they're dealing with that low liquidity.

So any number of things can happen over the coming weeks and months. Finally, I would add. I'd just remind everybody, September worst month of the year going back to 1950. Yes. However, when you filter for a couple other variables like the market being strong through July and falling off in August, we actually have pretty good results throughout the end of the year.

So I think a little bit of caution is warranted. Not too much of expectations is warranted with regard to Bitcoin and ceteris paribus for everything else.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah. Important for a lot of investors to take a deep breath going into the long weekend and bracing for September. Jared, thanks so much for that.