Bitcoin has biggest drop in a month, mining difficulty increases and Ethereum may lose dominance
As tensions have increased in Ukraine, investors are cautious and set aside risky assets such as stocks and cryptocurrencies, causing a new fall in Bitcoin (BTC). The digital currency had the highest value in four weeks and was traded again in the region of two US$40,000 – at 7:15 am, operating at a fall of 5.8% in the last 24 hours, at US$40,814.
The situation in Ukraine is coupled with the disclosure of the Fomc's tie in fourth-feira (16), which had already undermined or appetite due to the risk of investors. The Federal Reserve (Fed) affirmed that it is ready to start raising legal taxes to face inflation, or that it directly affects the attractiveness of assets considered more risky.
“Wall Street went into no full risk mode and either Bitcoin is paying or priced. Fears about geopolitical concerns and the risk of aggressiveness from the central bank deixam as cryptos em stay free”, comments Edward Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda. The movement has a direct impact in our world, whose price is higher for the higher potato in eight months, from US$ 1,902 to onça. “A month ago, no one wanted to play em ouro. Now, or gold suddenly becomes the favorite of the month, now that investors are scrambling for safe havens as geopolitical ridges intensify and fears grow that central banks may overreact by not opening up monetary policy, “
“Bitcoin/crypto is acting more like a high-growth technology asset. Just as Nasdaq is full of Web 2 [stocks], it's almost as if the Web 3 narrative has pegged cryptocurrency to act similarly to Nasdaq in less secure environments," said Ben Lilly, crypto economist at Jarvis Labs. in a message to CoinDesk. Not even the increased competition among miners for Bitcoin rewards, something that was once a cause for optimism in the market, has had a positive impact on the price of the cryptocurrency. Digital currency mining reached the highest difficulty rating in history this morning, but external factors continue to hold back movements. “BTC is stuck in broader market cross-currents now due to its increased institutional ownership,” crypto analytics platform MacroScope, which focuses on institutional trading and asset management, said via Twitter. Analysts predict further declines for Bitcoin if geopolitical tensions rise in Eastern Europe. “Bitcoin is the highest risk asset and an invasion of Ukraine would keep cryptocurrency selling pressure 10-15% higher in the short term,” Oanda's Moya said. According to technical analyst Vinícius Terranova, yesterday Bitcoin broke a key resistance (price with high buying interest), indicating that a deeper drop is imminent. The cryptocurrency is also holding below the 55-week moving average, behavior that often indicates weakness in the asset. The expert warns that the last time BTC was below this line for a long time, the price plummeted by more than 50%. Today's drop, therefore, could just be the start of a stronger pullback. For now, major altcoins are holding up well and posting smaller declines than Bitcoin, supported by the less bad performance of Ethereum (ETH), which was down 4.9% at $2,920, even after comments from Morgan Stanley that the Blockchain could lose dominance in the market. smart contract industry. Binance Coin (BNB), Cardano (ADA), and Solana (SOL), for example, are down 3% between yesterday and today. Among the top 100 crypto assets by market value, the worst performer this morning is BitTorrentOLD (BTTOLD), the old version of BitTorrent (BTT), undergoing a network migration. Next up are Ethereum rivals Elrond (EGLD), which is down 9%, and Terra (LUNA), which is down 8.2% after Terraform Labs and its CEO, Do Kwon, who are behind the project, were subpoenaed by the US Securities and Exchange (SEC) to collaborate on an ongoing investigation into a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform.