Bitcoin (BTC) price falls below $96K, Ethereum’s ETH, Cardano’s ADA and Dogecoin stumble more than 10% in crypto correction

Crypto asset prices fell on Thursday, benefiting from Wednesday’s market-wide sell-off, which was spurred by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Disappointing investors With his comments on expectations of US interest rate cuts next year.

Bitcoin (Bitcoin) An attempt to bounce back above $100,000 faded quickly earlier in the day and fell to a low of $97,000 during the US day. It recovered modestly to around $98,000 before another decline took prices below $96,000, down 4.8% over the past 24 hours.

Altcoins fared much worse, with the broad CoinDesk 20 Index falling more than 10% over the same period. The price of Ethereum (ETH) fell 10.8% to below $3,500, while Cardano’s ADA, Chainlink’s LINK, Aptos’ APT, Avalanche’s AVAX, and Dogecoin’s DOGE all suffered losses ranging from 15% to 20%. %. Notably, SOL fell to its weakest price since November 7 – almost erasing its post-election rally after falling 26% from its price. Record high Hit less than a month ago.

Over the past 24 hours — roughly since the interest rate decision by Fed policymakers yesterday — nearly $1.2 billion worth of leveraged cryptocurrency derivatives trading positions have been liquidated across all assets, Coinglass data He appears. More than $1 billion of that was long positions, or bets on rising prices.

In traditional markets, US stock indices rebounded slightly from Wednesday’s lows, but gave up part of pre-market gains during the session. The S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq were up 0.5% from Wednesday’s close.

Cryptocurrency prices have risen almost vertically since Donald Trump won the presidential election in early November, buoyed by hopes of pro-crypto policies from his incoming administration. The Fed’s forecast on Wednesday of a slower pace of interest rate cuts next year and Powell’s hawkish tone on rising inflation expectations had many investors running wild, triggering a broad market sell-off across cryptocurrencies, stocks and even gold.

The US Dollar Index (DXY), a key strength gauge against a basket of foreign currencies, rose above 108, its strongest level since November 2022, while US 10-year Treasury yields rose sharply above 4.6%, the highest level since May. .

“The cryptocurrency market was already on alert about the possibility of a correction following Bitcoin’s record surge to $100,000,” Joel Krueger, market strategist at LMAX Group, said in a note on Thursday. “We got that stimulus from the world of traditional markets….The fallout from the Fed’s decision on Wednesday was something we couldn’t ignore.”

“When you look at year-over-year growth, a decline like this looks healthy,” Azim Khan, co-founder and COO of Layer 2 network Morph, said in an email shared with CoinDesk.

“It is also worth noting that historically, a sell-off in securities can occur at the end of the year as investors offset losses against gains to reduce their tax liabilities,” Khan added. “While it is difficult to determine how much of this is driving the current trend, it could be a contributing factor.”

Updated (19 December 2024, 20:22 UTC): Bitcoin price update in headline and story.