Bitcoin's Checks Back to $23,400 While Ether, Altcoins Slip Mid-Week as Investors Become Risk Averse

The wider crypto market appears to have closely followed the price action of global equity markets yet again, falling in value a fair bit despite a strong showing on Wednesday evening. The value of Bitcoin has witnessed a 2.34 percent dip in the last 24 hours with its price now right above the $23,400 (roughly Rs. 18.64 lakh) mark across global exchanges, while Indian exchange CoinSwitch Kuber values BTC at $25,313 (roughly Rs. 20.16 lakh), 2.32 percent lower in the past 24 hours. On global exchanges like CoinMarketCap, Coinbase and Binance, the price of Bitcoin stands at $23,444 (roughly Rs. 18.67 lakh), while CoinGecko data shows that BTC's value is currently 2.1 percent lower than where it was last Thursday.

Ether shared a similar plight, losing out a fair bit of value in its chase towards the $2,000 (roughly Rs. 1.59 lakh) mark. At the time of publishing, Ether is valued at $1,964 (roughly Rs. 1.56 lakh) on CoinSwitch Kuber, while global exchanges see the crypto's value at $1,850 (roughly Rs. 1.47 lakh) with a 2.72 percent dip over the past 24 hours.

Ether's showing over the week so far sees the cryptocurrency's value turn to red by close to 0.2 percent when compared to its value last Thursday, as per CoinGecko data.

Gadgets 360's cryptocurrency price tracker reveals that most major altcoins had a poor showing mid-week with none of the better-known altcoins marking gains. The global crypto market capitalisation also witnessed a 3.09 percent dip through Wednesday and early Thursday.

Polygon, Polkadot, Uniswap, Cosmos, Solana, Monero, Cardano, Cosmos, Avalanche, and BNB all saw a slide in value in the last 24 hours.

Memecoins Shiba Inu and Dogecoin also followed the altcoin mix with dips to show for the day. Dogecoin is currently valued at $0.09 (roughly Rs. 7.6) after losing some 7.26 percent in value over the last 24 hours, while Shiba Inu is valued at $0.000016 (roughly Rs. 0.001291), down by 2.05 percent over the past day.

"The open interest for Ethereum options crossed $8.2 billion (roughly Rs. 65,318.5 crore) as it surged higher than that of Bitcoin at $5.4 billion (roughly Rs. 43,013 crore), as derivatives traders are placing directionally obvious bets for Ethereum pertaining to the upcoming Merge planned on September 19. However, options market analysis suggests that Ethereum's Merge may be a ‘buy the rumour, sell the news event with significant spikes in the Options market without a commensurate increase in withdrawals from exchanges to cold wallets indicative of a mismatch between expectations in price movements and on-chain activity," the research team at CoinDCX tells Gadgets 360.

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