<p><p>Following a failed challenge of the $70,000 level during early Monday trading hours in Asia, bitcoin <a href="https://coindesk.com/price/bitcoin/">(BTC)</a> fell below $67,000 in U.S. morning action.</p><p>Recently, bitcoin's price was lower 2.3% over the past 24 hours, underperforming the broad-market <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/indices/cd20/">CoinDesk 20 Index's</a> 1% loss during the same period. Ethereum's ether <a href="https://coindesk.com/price/ethereum/">(ETH)</a> was also down nearly 1%, while litecoin <a href="https://coindesk.com/price/litecoin/">(LTC)</a>, polkadot <a href="https://coindesk.com/price/polkadot/">(DOT)</a> and the internet Computer Protocol's token <a href="https://coindesk.com/price/internet-computer/">(ICP)</a> led losses with 4%-5% declines.</p><h5></h5><a><img src="https://www.coindesk.com/pf/resources/images/icons/Volume.svg?d=370" width="100%" /><span>Unmute</span></a><h1><a>Uptober Forming Amid Rising Stablecoin Liquidity and Bitcoin Transactions</a></h1><img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/6Wxph156/poster.jpg?width=720" width="100%" /><span>01:01</span><span>Bitcoin Breaks $64K While Gold Soars</span><img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/rWRyk79n/poster.jpg?width=720" width="100%" /><span>00:56</span><span>ETH/BTC Ratio Slid to Lowest Since April 2021</span><img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/UOK9GqZo/poster.jpg?width=720" width="100%" /><span>00:57</span><span>Is Bitcoin Losing Its Bullish Momentum?</span><p>A notable outperformer was Solana <a href="https://coindesk.com/price/solana/">(SOL)</a> with 2.4% gain to $163, though still down from its $170 weekend high.</p><p>Bitcoin mining stocks also suffered, but one outlier was TeraWulf (WULF), which recently pivoted to high-performance computing to power artificial intelligence (AI) data centers. It's higher by 12% on Monday.</p><p>Checking possible catalysts for today's action, one need look no further than the recent price movement: bitcoin had risen in near-continuous fashion since dipping to just under $60,000 eleven days ago – a modest reversal was surely in the cards at some point. There's also been a sharp rise in interest rates across Western economies on Monday, among them 10 basis point gains in both the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield and the German 10-year Bund yield. Other things being equal, higher rates can often pressure prices of risk assets, bitcoin among them.</p><p>Zooming out a bit further, bitcoin – for the moment – remains in the same flat-to-down price channel its been in since recording a record high of $73,700 more than seven months ago. Prior to today, the most recent challenge of the $70,000 level was in late July. It too failed and bitcoin had sunk to under $52,000 days later.</p><p>"Wouldn't be unreasonable to get another HL [higher low] potentially with a sweep of $66K, probably where the next opportunity is," well-followed analyst Skew <a href="https://x.com/52kskew/status/1848271358490476597">said in an X post</a>.</p><p>Edited by Stephen Alpher.</p><p></p><p></p></p>