The cryptocurrency ecosystem’s sell-off hasn’t apparently ended just yet, as in the last 24-hour period it has lost about $6 billion as most top cryptocurrencies are currently down. Bitcoin, the flagship cryptocurrency, is now trading under the $3,700 mark.
According to CryptoCompare data BTC has lost 3.1% of its value in said period, and as such is trading at $3,680. Its trading volume, as recently mentioned, has recently hit a 7-month high, while adoption has kept on growing.
As CryptoGlobe covered the Lightning Network (LN), bitcoin’s layer-two scaling solution, has just seen its mainnet capacity surpass 500 BTC, and it currently has well over 15,000 open payment channels. This month, a crypto artist sold a tiny piece of artwork for one milisatoshi – about $0.000000037 – through it.
Moreover, the number of cryptocurrency ATMs has doubled to over 4,000 this year, which means that 6 of these machines were installed every day this year. Most of these are located in the United States, and the crypto ATM market is expected to grow to nearly $145 million by 2023.
The cryptocurrency’s fall comes during a volatile period in the equities market. Earlier this week, the Dow soared over 1,000 points, making it the biggest single-day rally it has ever seen. Shortly after, it started dropping and yesterday the market closed in the green after recovering from losses it was seeing that day.
Some analysts believe the stock market’s recovery could be behind BTC’s recent sell-off. Anthony Pompliano has recently defended that bitcoin is still a non-correlated asset. Per his words, BTC’s correlation with the S&P 500 and the Dow is “near zero.”
Just like eToro’s senior market analyst Mati Greenspan, Pompliano revealed he believes BTC could drop below the $3,000 mark, although a short-term decline won’t mean bitcoin will fail to become a legitimate asset class. He stated:
Crypto is still just fairly small, and so if we’ve got a fixed supply asset (such as bitcoin), then [when] increased demand comes in … we’re [potentially] going to get an increase in price.
Bitcoin was notably one off the cryptos that dropped the least in the last 24 hours. Most top altcoins, including Ethereum’s ether, XRP, and TRX, dropped over 5% in said period, while litecoin and monero actually rose less than 0.5%.
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) appears to be the biggest loser, as it’s down nearly 10% in the last 24 hours, trading at little over $150.7. Behind it, Bitcoin Cash Satoshi’s Vision (BSV), is down 7.9% to $86.4.
