In mid-afternoon U.S. trading, bitcoin (BTC) was lower by about 4% over the past 24 hours. At $59,000, the price has returned to levels not seen since the U.S. Federal Reserve unexpectedly slashed its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points in mid-September. Altcoins outperformed somewhat, with the broad-based crypto benchmark CoinDesk 20 Index declining just under 3% during the same period. Ether (ETH) dropped 3.5%, while only decentralized exchange Uniswaps’s token (UNI) had positive return during the day on news about the platform’s own layer-2 plans.