Bitcoin, Ethereum Continue to Fall as Losses Deepen Across the Crypto Market

Not content to merely erase its recent gains, Bitcoin’s price today continued its drop until it reached its lowest point since late February.

Declining 8% in just 24 hours, Bitcoin dipped below $36,000 before stabilizing. It’s a similar story for the crypto market as a whole, which lost 7% during the same time frame; Ethereum shed 7% from yesterday’s price, and the rest of the top 10 faced losses of between 5% and 9%.

Just yesterday, crypto asset prices were noticeably higher, rising along with equities on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve announced an interest rate increase that was slightly lower than what many traders expected.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average recorded a 2.8% gain while tech-stack Nasdaq registered a 3.2% increase.

But that was a whole day ago.

The Dow Jones and Nasdaq dropped 3.1% and 5% today, respectively. For the Dow Jones, that meant its biggest daily gain since 2020 was followed by its biggest daily loss since 2020. The gist of the narrative is that traders reacted with relief yesterday that the Fed’s inflation measures were measured before realizing today that the 0.5 percentage point increase on interest rates are still very high by historical standards.

Things are less drastic on the cryptocurrency front, which is accustomed to volatility.

After starting the year at $46,700, Bitcoin has seesawed up and down while rarely getting back above that mark. It’s now down over 21% for the year, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Its losses mirror those of stocks—more specifically, shares in tech companies. Google parent company Alphabet is down nearly 20%, Microsoft has lost 17% of its share price, and Facebook’s Meta has taken a 34% haircut since the start of the year.