BTC Drops Drastically to $26,000 Mark Amid Market Turbulence; Most Cryptocurrencies See Losses

Bitcoin recorded a substantial tumble in its price after succumbing to the market pressure on Friday, May 12. The world's most expensive cryptocurrency, which was trading at over $30,000 (roughly Rs. 24.6 lakh) up until some weeks ago, today dropped to $26,638 (roughly Rs. 21.8 lakh) on both national as well as international exchanges. In the last 24 hours, Bitcoin lost $882 (roughly Rs. 72,414) from its price point. Over the last day, Bitcoin saw a decrease of nearly three percent. Whereas, the cryptocurrency has sunk by nine percent in the past seven days.

Ether stepped into Friday with a loss of 3.40 percent. At the time or writing, ETH was trading at the price point of $1,762 (roughly Rs. 1.44 lakh), as shown by the crypto price tracker by Gadgets 360. Over the last day, ETH recorded a value dip of $68 (roughly Rs. 5,583) in the last 24 hours.

“The decline in prices could be attributed to various reasons. On one hand, after a few days of high Bitcoin fees, which led to Binance pausing withdrawals, fees have now decreased, causing market participants to delay selling. On the other hand, talking about the broader crypto market's losses, most are following Bitcoin's trend, with larger price fluctuations due to their smaller market capitalisation,” Edul Patel, the CEO of Mudrex crypto investment platform, told Gadgets 360.

Most cryptocurrencies followed BTC and ETH on the price chart to trade in reds.

These include Binance Coin, Cardano, Dogecoin, Solana, Polygon, Polkadot, Tron, and Litecoin.

Losses also struck Shiba Inu, Avalanche, Chainlink, LEO, Uniswap, and Monero.

The overall crypto market valuation dunked by 2.81 percent to stand at $1.10 trillion (roughly Rs. 90,57,923 crore), as per CoinMarketCap.

“US regulatory hurdles continue to pose challenges for the largest user base of crypto and businesses who have set up shop there,” Rajagopal Menon, Vice President, WazirX, told Gadgets 360.

Stablecoins Tether, USD Coin, Binance USD managed to see small gains alongside Cosmos, Stellar, and Dogefi.

“There was a dramatic increase in price volatility during the week as several triggers resulted in actuated directional moves. Lack of market liquidity is being touted as the main reason for heightened volatility, with rumours suggesting some market makers like Jump cutting back operations. Amongst top tokens by M.Cap, it's worth highlighting that several major crypto assets fell over 15 percent in prices last week, including MATIC, ICP, FIL, APTOS, and ARB. APE was another token that fell by over 15 percent as the uncertainties of a sizeable token unlock in a shaky market dented investor confidence. A clear outlier in the list was Bitcoin SV, a BTC fork, which was positioned as an alternative to the congested Bitcoin network and rallied ~10 percent in prices,” Parth Chaturvedi, Investments Lead, CoinSwitch Ventures, told Gadgets 360.

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