Bitcoin Drops to $19,000 as Investors Anticipate Tighter Fed Policy Later in the Week

The downtrend in the cryptocurrency market that began on Friday extended into trading on Monday despite a fairly positive weekend as investors await a collection of inflation reports due later in the week that could offer insight into what comes next from the US Federal Reserve. As things stand, the value of Bitcoin is down by 2.21 percent in the last 24 hours with its price now around the $19,000 (roughly Rs. 15.65 lakh) mark across global exchanges while Indian exchanges like CoinDCX value BTC at $20,209 (roughly Rs. 16.65 lakh), 0.53 percent lower than where its value stood early Monday.

On global exchanges like CoinMarketCap, Coinbase, and Binance the price of Bitcoin stands at $19,037 (roughly Rs. 15.68 lakh) while CoinGecko data shows that BTC's value now sits 2.9 percent lower than where it stood last Tuesday.

Ether, the largest smart contracts token, has also seen a plunge in value, dropping its value below the $1,350 (roughly Rs. 1.11 lakh) range that we've been seeing the cryptocurrency trade around in recent weeks. Ether is currently down by roughly 3.62 percent over the past 24 hours, trading in the $1,270 (roughly Rs. 1.05 lakh) range across global exchanges. Meanwhile, on Indian exchanges, ETH is valued at $1,369 (roughly Rs. 1.12 lakh) where values are down by 1.41 percent over the past day.

Gadgets 360's cryptocurrency price tracker reveals that most major altcoins bled alongside the top two tokens with the global crypto market capitalisation numbers also falling 2.67 percent through Monday and early Tuesday.

Cardano, Avalanche, Cosmos, Solana, Polygon, TRON, Chainlink, Monero, Uniswap, and BNB all see themselves in the red at the time of writing.

Memecoins Shiba Inu and Dogecoin haven't been spared either. Dogecoin is currently valued at $0.05 (roughly Rs. 4.86) after losing 5.08 percent in value over the last 24 hours, while, Shiba Inu is valued at $0.00001 (roughly Rs. 0.000843), down 7.19 percent over the past day.

"Last week non-farm payroll data was released. The unemployment rate dropped to 3.7 percent compared to the forecast of 3.5 percent. This led to a sharp fall of markets last week. Although BTC and S&P 500 have traded in close correlation in 2022 so far, we might see some early trends of weakening correlation," claims CoinDCX's Research Team speaking to Gadgets 360.

"In the Month of September, Bitcoin outperformed both the Nasdaq and S&P 500 which fell by 10.5 percent and 9.3 percent respectively against 3.11 percent. Interestingly, the Dow Jones index that tracks the 30 largest industrial stocks was more volatile than Bitcoin, highlighting the asset's maturing nature, particularly in the trading session of October 7."

"Key macroeconomics events to track for the week are BOE (Bank of England) Governor Bailey's speech on October 12 and the release of CPI Inflation Data on October 13. Currently, the crypto market capitalisation stands at $850 billion (roughly Rs. 70,02,582 crore). For any major activity, we will need the market cap to cross the $1 trillion (roughly Rs. 82,37,393 crore) market cap. Markets look weak at the moment and will need some positive news to fuel recovery.," explains CoinDCX's Research team.

Cryptocurrency is an unregulated digital currency, not a legal tender and subject to market risks. The information provided in the article is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, trading advice or any other advice or recommendation of any sort offered or endorsed by NDTV. NDTV shall not be responsible for any loss arising from any investment based on any perceived recommendation, forecast or any other information contained in the article.