BTC Price Stays Above $22,000 as Most Altcoins Record Losses

The price of Bitcoin stood at $22,155 (roughly Rs. 18.2 lakh) on Wednesday on both national as well as international exchanges. The oldest cryptocurrency has been trading around $22,000 (roughly Rs. 18 lakh) for a few days. On Wednesday, Bitcoin recorded an 0.88 percent drop in its value. In terms of numbers, the price of the oldest and most widely used cryptocurrency fell by $301 (roughly Rs. 24,738) over the last 24 hours. BTC’s market movement often sets the course for the performance of other cryptocurrencies.

Ether, for instance, joined BTC as its value fell by 0.43 percent on Wednesday. ETH is trading at $1,560 (roughly Rs. 1.28 lakh), according to Gadgets 360’s crypto price tracker.

A group of popular cryptocurrencies has been seeing more losses than gains in recent days. These include Cardano, Polygon, Solana, Polkadot, and Litecoin.

Both memecoins Dogecoin and Shiba Inu saw their values fall further on Wednesday, alongside Avalanche, Chainlink, and Cosmos.

“Most cryptocurrencies dipped in the past 24 hours following the hawkish comments of Fed Chair Jerome Powell on the interest rate hikes. Neither BTC nor ETH is ready to make a sharp move. Traders and investors might take some time to understand and digest the hawkish comments and uncertainties associated with Silvergate Bank,” Edul Patel, the CEO and Co-Founder of crypto investment form Mudrex told Gadgets 360.

The overall crypto market valuation dropped by 1.20 percent in the last 24 hours to $1.02 trillion (roughly Rs. 83,42,190 crore), data from CoinMarketCap showed.

Only a small number of cryptocurrencies managed to reel in gains on Wednesday. These include stablecoins such as Tether, USD Coin, Ripple, and Binance USD.

Uniswap, Leo, Monero, Dash, Qtum — these cryptocurrencies also settled with gains.

Despite the ongoing market slump, industry experts believe that better days are not too far for cryptocurrencies, currently dealing in losses. “Binance USD’s Market Cap fell below $10 billion (roughly Rs. 82,133 crore) after Coinbase delisted it. Crypto investors have redeemed some $7 billion (roughly Rs. 57,493 crore) of tokens from issuer Paxos since regulators ramped up pressure on the stablecoin. Meanwhile, industry giant ConsenSys announced that it is rolling out a zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) public testnet on March 28, intensifying the race among top crypto firms to go fully live with the fast-emerging technology. Polygon is also planning a launch in March,” Parth Chaturvedi, Crypto Ecosystem Lead, CoinSwitch told Gadgets 360.

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