Crypto Market Cap Below $1T, Bitcoin Fights for $20K (Weekend Watch)

After yesterday’s price plunge towards and beneath $20,000, bitcoin has stalled and struggles to remain above that coveted line.

The altcoins also suffered quite a bit at the start of the weekend, and most sit calmly now.

Bitcoin Fights for $20K

The previous week was particularly harmful to the primary cryptocurrency, which dumped by more than $4,000 in less than seven days to a monthly low of around $21,000.

It spent most of this past week around that level, trading sideways. The largest price fluctuation came on Thursday when the asset tried to reclaim $22,000 but was stopped in its tracks.

This led to more violent consequences, especially after Fed Chair Jerome Powell reiterated the central bank’s stance on fighting inflation. In a matter of hours, BTC slumped by more than a grand.

The landscape worsened yesterday morning when bitcoin took another dive and dipped below $20,000 for the first time since the middle of July. Since then, it has been unable to recover more than a few hundred dollars and now sits just above that line, meaning that its market cap has remained stuck below $400 billion.

Altcoins Sit Tight

The alternative coins suffered just as badly as BTC, if not more, yesterday but have remained calm since then.

Ethereum slipped below $1,500 in the past 24 hours and still sits around that level. It’s worth noting that the second-largest crypto had spiked above $1,700 just a few days ago, but there were several warning shots that something similar could happen in the short term.

Binance Coin dropped hard yesterday and, after another minor decline, finds itself trading at $280 today.

Ripple, Solana, Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and Avalanche are also slightly in the red on a daily scale, while Cardano, Polkadot, MATIC, and TRON are with insignificant gains.

With most of the lower- and mid-cap alts sitting in the same boat, the overall crypto market cap has remained well below $1 trillion after losing $80 billion yesterday.