Cryptocurrency prices today continued to extend losses with a slump that’s brought Bitcoin to its lowest levels since its early-December flash-crash. The world’s most popular and largest digital token by market capitalization was trading more than 1% lower at $42,909.
Bitcoin, famed for its volatility, has shed more than $26,000 since hitting a record of almost $69,000 in early November. The cryptocurrency is down over 7% in the last seven days.
“The markets crash saw over $900 million worth of BTC being liquidated over the last 24 hours. However, many longtime investors seemed to make good out of this opportunity as one of the 3rd largest Bitcoin whales added yet another 551 Bitcoin to its kitty, through Binance. On the daily timeframe, BTC can be seen moving within a descending channel pattern. $40,000 is the next key support,” said Siddharth Menon, COO of WazirX.
Ether, the coin linked to ethereum blockchain and the second-largest cryptocurrency, also plummeted nearly 4% at $3,380, as per CoinDesk. On the other hand, Dogecoin prices surged about 0.4% to $0.15 whereas Shiba Inu was up over 2% to $0.000031. Meanwhile, Binance Coin was almost flat at $470.
The performance of other digital tokens also improved with cryptos like Solana, Polygon, Uniswap, Stellar, Cardano, XRP, Tether, Litecoin trading with gains over the last 24 hours. The global crypto market capitalization slipped 2% at $2.17 trillion, as per CoinGecko.
The recent swings in cryptocurrencies come amid a volatile period for financial markets. Spiking inflation is forcing central banks to tighten monetary policy, threatening to reduce the liquidity tailwind that lifted a wide range of assets.
Global crypto-themed funds witnessed record net inflows of $9.3 billion in 2021, a 36% increase over 2020 as institutional adoption grew in a breakout year for crypto assets, said digital asset manager CoinShares in a recent report.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Technology Express staff and is published from a syndicated feed)