With the risk of war on the horizon amid ongoing Russia-Ukraine tensions, ripples have been sent across the globe and multiple industries. To the great woes of the crypto industry, it falls among the latter. With falling investor interest and rising risk, the prices of popular cryptocurrencies have been tumbling.
Last November, Bitcoin reached a record high of $69,000 and rose by nearly 60% in the year. Since then, however, its fortunes have reversed and its price kept falling. After it made a comeback last week and neared the $45,000 mark, now, it has once again dropped to a more than two-week low.
You can blame the worsening situation, escalating border skirmishes, and the glooming war clouds between Russia and Ukraine (and the US added to the mix as well) for that. Add to that the hacking of NFT platform OpenSea and nearly $1.7 million worth of NFTs stolen, and you get an idea as to why investors are further moving away from cryptos.
Over the weekend, Bitcoin (the largest cryptocurrency) dropped below the $40, 000 mark to trade at $36, 831 this morning in Asia. It was trading on Coinbase at $38,265 at 5 pm India time, a fall of 4% in the previous 24 hours and 9.6% lower over the previous seven days.
As for other digital tokens, Avalanche fell by about 5%, and Ethereum fell by nearly 4% (trading at $2531 currently). Binance Coin fell by 4.2% while Terra and Cardano plummeted by 3.31% and 3.85% respectively. Dogecoin dropped by nearly 2% (currently trading at $0.12), and the overall crypto market cap dropped by 4.18% over the past 24 hours.
This sharp fall in prices of cryptos and the miseries of the crypto market comes even as gold has reached its peak since June. It is currently trading at $1909.70 per ounce. According to John Roque of 22V Research, the price of Bitcoin could fall below $30,000 as trader interest shifted to gold and elevated its price to a record high.
“In the globe’s latest maelstrom — U.S./Russia/Ukraine — Bitcoin, the asset purported to be the answer to every question, has quietly weakened and is notably underperforming its arch-enemy, gold,” he said.
