Bitcoin’s positive price movements were short-lived once more as the asset fell to $47,000 again. The altcoins are in the red as well, with Ethereum sliding below $4,000 and Polkadot dumping by nearly 6%.
The past several days were quite volatile for bitcoin. It tried its hand at $50,000 on December 12th when the bears stepped up and pushed it south hard. As a result, BTC plummeted below $46,000 just a day later.
It failed to recover a lot of value until the US Federal Reserve said it will leave the interest rates unchanged. This led to an immediate price surge from $46,500 to $49,500, as reported yesterday.
However, the primarily negative sentiment lately returned in the following hours. BTC was unable to continue upwards and started to lose value, culminating in another drop below $47,000 hours ago.
As of now, bitcoin has bounced off above that level, but it’s still more than 3% down on the day, and its market cap is beneath $900 billion.
BTC’s retracement is aligned with similar movements in the global stock markets. The three largest US stock indexes – S&P 500, Dow Jones, and NASDAQ, all closed in the red yesterday, and their futures contracts have lost some traction as well.
The alternative coins enjoyed yesterday with impressive runs as well. Today, though, most are deep in the red. Ethereum was finally trading above $4,000, but a steep decline since then has driven the second-largest crypto to well below that line.
Polkadot has lost the most from the larger cap alts, with a 6% drop. Nevertheless, Binance Coin, Solana, Cardano, Ripple, Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and Matic have all dropped in the past 24 hours.
Further losses are evident from Elrond (-16%), XDC Network (-13%), Voyager Token (-10%), NEAR Protocol (-10%), Kadena (-8%), and others.
The cryptocurrency market capitalization is down by almost $100 billion to under $2.2 trillion.
