Bitcoin Falls Below $20,000 While Ether Drops Under $1,500 After Landmark 'Merge' Event

Crypto markets slumped during a subdued trading day following Ethereum's official shift to proof-of-stake as fears of economic recession and rate hikes to tame inflationary pressure continues to weigh in on investor sentiments globally. As things stand, the value of Bitcoin has witnessed a dip of 0.62 percent in the last 24 hours with its price just below the $20,000 (roughly Rs. 15.94 lakh) mark across global exchanges while Indian exchanges like CoinSwitch and CoinDCX value BTC at $21,831 (roughly Rs. 17.4 lakh), 0.76 percent higher than that on Tuesday morning.

On global exchanges like CoinMarketCap, Coinbase, and Binance the price of Bitcoin stands at $19,841 (roughly Rs. 15.81 lakh) while CoinGecko data shows that BTC's value continues to sit 2.7 percent higher than where it stood last Friday.

Ether is down by close to 8 percent over the past 24 hours. Ether whipsawed earlier in the day, trading between $1,583 (roughly Rs. 1.26 lakh) and $1,640 (roughly Rs. 1.3 lakh) directly before and after the Merge. Ethereum Classic and Lido DAO's token also spiked post-Merge before surrendering those gains.

As things stand, Ether is valued at $1,638 (roughly Rs. 1.3 lakh) across Indian exchanges while values on global exchanges see the crypto's value at $1,478 (roughly Rs. 1.17 lakh), where the cryptocurrency's value has slipped up by 7.25 percent over the past 24 hours.

Gadgets 360's cryptocurrency price tracker reveals that most major altcoins had a similarly poor showing over the past day. The global crypto market capitalisation also witnessed a drop of 2.31 percent through late Thursday and early Friday.

Polkadot, Cosmos, Solana, Cardano, Polygon, TRON, Uniswap, Monero, Avalanche, Chainlink, and BNB all saw heavy losses over the last 24 hours.

Memecoins Shiba Inu and Dogecoin also stared at losses on the day. Dogecoin is currently valued at $0.06 (roughly Rs. 4.75) after losing 0.81 percent in value over the last 24 hours, while, Shiba Inu is valued at $0.000012 (roughly Rs. 0.000937), down 1.5 percent over the past day.

"Last week was full of ‘high impact' macro events, with the US CPI inflation rate for August the primary market mover. At 8.3 percent, the rate was higher than the estimated 8.1 percent and the more sticky component core inflation too beat estimates at 6.3 percent. This shock on the upside, torpedoed prices across asset classes, including US equities, gold and crypto. While this cements further aggressive rate hikes by the Fed in the upcoming FOMC, the bigger concern for the global economy is now around regional unknowns like the European gas crisis, Chinese real estate implosion and the Japanese Yen's record depreciation," said Parth Chaturvedi, Crypto Ecosystem Lead, CoinSwitch in an analysis shared with Gadgets 360.

"Surprisingly though, crypto markets recovered much better than other risk-on assets, as the ETH Merge took centre stage. Amidst heightened volatility and trading volumes, Ethereum transitioned to proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms, reducing its energy consumption by more than 99 percent. Additionally, there's a ‘Triple Halving' of ETH supply and the asset is now deflationary.

Another positive development was continued strength in BTC bids, even amongst Mt. Gox-related supply dump rumours. BTC outperformed ETH over the course of the week, as Fidelity announced its plans to offer BTC exposure to its retail trading clients. Amongst altcoins, the focus remains on ADA as the upcoming Vasil hard fork approaches," said Chaturvedi.

"Speaking of hard forks, the proof-of-work ETH hard fork might still be a possibility, although speculative prices for the token have crashed since the Merge. More clarity is expected later today. All in all, this was a monumental week for the Ethereum ecosystem and showcases the strength of its developer community," he added.

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