Bitcoin, Ether Continue to Trade in Red While All Popular Altcoins Mark Big Drops in Value

Bitcoin's slide in December has continued to be a thing in what has turned into one of the worst months for the most popular cryptocurrency since May. The market has suffered a fair bit over the past few days as a result of investors booking profits closer to the start of the new year and injecting very little into the market, leaving the price of Bitcoin to hover close to $46,500 (roughly Rs. 34.7 lakh) on global exchanges. At the time of writing, Bitcoin's valuation was down by 2.34 percent over the past 24 hours and was priced at $46,731 (roughly Rs. 34.9 lakh) on Indian exchange CoinSwitch Kuber, while global exchanges like CoinMarketCap showed a 2.29 percent dip to see Bitcoin valued slightly higher at $46,783 (roughly Rs. 34.9 lakh).

As per CoinGecko, Bitcoin's value has dropped by over 19 percent over the past month, even though the cryptocurrency is up by more than 70 percent year-on-date.

Ether had a similarly poor showing mid-week. The second most valuable cryptocurrency is down 3.78 percent over the past 24 hours after a dip of 1.09 percent through Wednesday. At the time of writing, Ether was valued at $3,665 (roughly Rs. 2.73 lakh) on CoinSwitch Kuber while values on global exchanges saw the second-largest crypto by market cap pegged at $3,669 (roughly Rs. 2.74 lakh), where the coin saw an identical dip of 3.7 percent over the past 24 hours. The dip saw Ether's performance over the week dip by a whopping 8.2 percent in value.

Gadgets 360's cryptocurrency price tracker reveals that the entire market has been suffering from the lack of capital infusion post-Christmas. Tether, Ripple, Chainlink, and Polygon all witnessed considerable drops, while Uniswap, Cardano, and Polkadot remain the biggest losers on the day.

Meme coins haven't had a good week either. Dogecoin had it marginally better but the dog coin dropped by 4.03 percent in 24 hours to be valued at $0.17 (roughly Rs. 12.63). Elsewhere, arch-rival Shiba Inu continued its drop too, falling by 6.74 percent to be valued at $0.000033 (roughly Rs. 0.002488). SHIB's value has dropped by 4.8 percent in the past week after a rally last week, egged on by strong whale accumulation.

As 2021 is ending, investors compare their losses and gains. One of them is El Salvador's government which invested heavily in Bitcoin, but the fluctuations in prices made them suffer. Now, there is news that they are thoroughly analysing the situation and might reconsider their investment. If the market turns bullish and stays like that for a relatively long period, the investors might stay.

Speaking about the Central American country of El Salvador, the nation is currently in the midst of a crypto-related crisis after its citizens have complained about fraudulent transactions in their government-issued Chivo wallets. Over the past few days, numerous Salvadorans have taken to platforms like Twitter to complain that Bitcoin tokens in their Chivo wallets have been mysteriously disappearing.

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