Bitcoin’s price went on a real-life rollercoaster at the start of the new year with a pump to $46,000 and a massive dump by nearly five grand yesterday.
Most altcoins are buried in red as well, with the total crypto market cap declining by about $150 billion at one point yesterday.
The quiet end of 2023 is nowhere to be found in 2024, at least for now. Bitcoin exploded on Tuesday from $42,500 to a 21-month peak at almost $46,000 as the community was preparing for the potential approval of a spot BTC ETF in the States.
However, speculations arose day later that the SEC could actually reject all current applications. Although there is little evidence that this could actually come to fruition, it had a massive impact on BTC’s price.
In a matter of hours, the primary cryptocurrency dumped by almost $5,000 since the previous day’s peak and slumped to $41,500 (on Bitstamp). It left millions in liquidations and erased all the recent gains. And this all happened on Bitcoin’s 15th birthday.
The asset bounced off in the following hours and spiked above $43,000. However, it has failed to reclaim that level decisively and now stands around it.
Its market capitalization has declined to $840 billion, but its dominance over the altcoins has jumped to 51.2% as most alts have dumped even harder.
When Bitcoin goes in either direction with enhanced volatility, most alternative coins tend to follow suit. This was definitely the case yesterday, and the landscape now is quite painful as well.
Ethereum is down by more than 6% on a daily scale and sits just inches above $2,200. BNB went down from $330 to $300 in hours but now stands above $320.
Ripple, Solana, Cardano, Avalanche, Dogecoin, Polkadot, Polygon, and Chainlink have slumped even more, with losses of up to 12% in the case of MATIC.
The total crypto market cap was also at a near 2-year high of $1.750 trillion before the bloodbath but dumped by $160 billion. As of now, the metric is up to $1.650 trillion on CMC, which means that it is down by $100 billion on a daily scale.
