Bitcoin is down today, and isn’t just down a little – under $60,000 for the first time in a while, BTC plunged around $4000 per coin in the last market cycle.
Ethereum also sank today, to around $4200, and various altcoins are feeling a wider downward cryptocurrency pressure in today’s market.
Even Solana, hailed for its modern blockchain capabilities, reversed a spike from $210 up to around $255, and erased those gains, settling back down to near $210 at press time.
“The largest cryptocurrency by market value was down 4.2% over the past 24 hours to around $57,800 as of 17:53 UTC (12:53 p.m. ET) on Thursday, after failing to sustain an all-time high around $69,000 last week,” writes Dominick Dantes at Coindesk. “Bitcoin’s price retreat came amid a broad sell-off in cryptocurrency markets, with the CoinDesk 20-listed digital assets trading in the red. Ether, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain and the second-largest overall, was down 4.2% over the past 24 hours, slipping below the key psychological level of $4,000 earlier Thursday.”
What’s behind the red ink?
Some analysts suggested it has to do with the outlook on potential Federal Reserve activity around interest rates, and how that might change the dollar/BTC equation.
“Bitcoin’s long-term outlook remains bullish, but the waters over the next few months will be rough as institutional investors look to see if the Fed will be forced to raise rates sooner and trigger a broad-based selloff of risky assets,” said Edward Moya, senior markets analyst for the foreign-exchange broker Oanda, in another piece co-authored by Dantes earlier this week.
Indeed, traders are likely to jettison riskier or safe haven assets when the Fed acts (or may be preparing to act) to raise interest rates. We’ll keep an eye on this type of activity and see where crypto coin prices go next week.
