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Bitcoin fell Friday morning in Asia, trading below support at US$27,000 in a lackluster start to June after posting its first monthly loss of the year in May. Ether fell back below US$1,900 and most other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies traded flat to lower. Cardano led the losers, while Litecoin found buying support as the token’s third halving event draws near. US equity futures rose following gains in regular trading Thursday after the debt ceiling bill passed the House of Representatives and now goes to the Senate. Manufacturing data showed an easing in the pace of inflation, tempering concerns about more interest rate hikes ahead. On the down side, analysts expect<\/a> the US to issue as much as US$1 trillion in treasury bills this year to replenish its cash, which could suck liquidity from risk assets such as cryptocurrencies.<\/p>\n Bitcoin fell 1.17% over the last 24 hours to US$26,878 at 07:10 am in Hong Kong, but held onto a weekly gain of 1.53%, according to date<\/a> from CoinMarketCap. The leading cryptocurrency dropped around 7% in May, but is still up 62% for the year so far.<\/p>\n Ether inched down 0.19% to trade at US$1,866, with a weekly gain of 3.20%.<\/p>\n Most other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies traded flat to lower in the past 24 hours, while Litecoin bucked that trend to gain 5.11% to US$94.41, up 9.98% for the week. The token’s third halving event<\/a> is set for Aug. 2, which would reduce the supply of the token. <\/p>\n Litecoin’s on-chain activity picked up in May, according to blockchain data tracker IntoTheBlock<\/a> on Tuesday, which noted almost 8.5 million Litecoin addresses with a balance by the end of May, compared to 7.09 million addresses by the end of March.<\/p>\n Cardano’s ADA led the losers in the top 10 non-stablecoin tokens, falling 2.35% to US$0.3659, but still managing a weekly gain of 2.03%.<\/p>\n The market cap of Tether’s USDT stablecoin hit an all-time high of US$83.60 billion early Friday morning in Asia, up more than 26% from the start of the year.<\/p>\n \u201c(USDT’s rise was) undoubtedly linked to the banking woes in the US and the demise of USD<\/a> from Binance; seems like investors are putting their faith \u2013 and money \u2013 with Tether, so far,\u201d said Justin d’Anethan, head of APAC business development at Belgium-based crypto market maker keyrock<\/a>,<\/p>\n The total market cap of cryptocurrencies dropped 0.64% in the past 24 hours to US$1.13 trillion, while the 24-hour market volume fell 7.79% to US$30.28 billion.<\/p>\n (Updates first section to show US equity futures rose.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\ncrypto<\/h2>\n