A nice tumble. Cryptocurrency markets have been on a tear since yesterday, with Bitcoin (BTC) hitting $38,000 early this morning. And altcoins have not been spared either. A look at what’s been going on
Bitcoin price hits $38,000
While it had previously managed to stay above the psychological threshold of $40,000, the Bitcoin price had a big scare last night. The queen of crypto-currencies lost -12% in about ten hours, to touch $38,000:
Bitcoin fell overnight (Source: TradingView, BTC/USDT)
BTC has not reached this level for six months. Its capitalization is now $735 billion.
Altcoins are uniformly in the red
On the altcoin side, it’s the same story. The price of Ether (ETH) shows a fall even more consistent, with -14% lost over the same period. It is now back below the $3,000 mark and is trading at $2,800 this morning:
Ether price follows the same trajectory (Source: TradingView, ETH/USDT)
Over the last 24 hours, Binance’s BNB has lost -10%, Solana’s SOL is down -9% and Cardano’s ADA is down -10%. All altcoins in the top 20 are showing losses between -5% and -10%.
The total cryptocurrency capitalisation has lost over $200 billion in the space of a few hours. This makes it fall below $2 trillion again.
How to explain this sharp drop
Many interpretations are currently being given to explain this fall in crypto asset prices. Russia’s proposal to ban cryptocurrencies altogether may have been a trigger.
Some point to a global context: equity markets are also gloomy this week, with the Dow Jones, S&P500 and NASDAQ looking grim. Yet it is known that the cryptocurrency markets have shown a rather high correlation with equities in recent weeks.
Many analysts also note that recent announcements by the Federal Reserve, which is considering consecutive interest rate hikes this year, have sent a chill through the financial markets.
