Trading around US$60,000 late last week, Bitcoin dropped almost 10% over the course of the day in response to the news, hitting just above US$53,500 by Friday day night, according to CoinMarketCap.
“This news has affected all markets,” said Jonathon Miller, Australian managing director of digital asset exchange Kraken, told Forkast.News.
While the price volatility was far greater than what many may have foreseen, as Forkast.News reported late last week, some industry watchers were expecting some market volatility late last week as almost US$3 billion worth of Bitcoin price options were set to expire.
Bitcoin had already recovered over 8% to briefly crack the US$58,000 mark this morning, while Ethereum rebounded almost 9% after a low of just above the US$4,000 mark early this morning.
“Inflation is skyrocketing, and people are searching for more alternatives for their money the bank,” Ruud Feltkamp, CEO of cloud-based automated crypto trading bot Cryptohopper, told Forkast.News in an emailed statement over the weekend.
100 extra coins acquired with a discount.” After El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender, Bukele has often taken to Twitter to announce when the country adds to its positions — including when Bitcoin’s price plunged 15% right after the adoption in a move that could have added fuel for opponents of the adoption.
While Bitcoin set a new all-time high of US$68,789 earlier in the month, its market dominance has continued to fall from a two-month high in October, while Ethereum has only continued to grow.
“Up until recently Bitcoin has had a huge amount of dominance because it’s been the core asset, the most developed asset, the most used asset,” Miller said.
For instance, one of the few coins to show steady growth over the past few days is LUNA, the native token of the Terra blockchain, which actually gained more than 12% over that time to breach US$50, nearing its all-time high it set earlier in the month of US$54.77.
But this is not a case of a token being created to cash in on the hype — Omicron was only created in early November as a fork of the OlymusDAO DeFi platform and is just a case of incredible timing for the newly formed token that it happens to share a name with the new strain.
“Covid Token” and has surged 57% in the past 24 hours to be trading at US$0.00389981 at press time — still almost 90% below its all-time high — which means investors who bought in at its Aug.
“But we’re talking about the internet of money here and there are lots of forms, and where people like to play around on the net they’re doing so now with crypto.