Illustrative image of two commemorative bitcoins with a green background.
Artur Widak | Nurfoto | Getty Images
Bitcoin fell briefly below $ 21,000 on Tuesday in Asia before recovering slightly, continuing to fall as investors sold risky assets.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency fell nearly 14% in the last 24 hours, while ethereum fell more than 12% over the same period, according to Coinbase data.
Bitcoin hovered around $ 21,800 on Tuesday in Asia.
“Everything is on fire now, be it stocks, be it cryptocurrency assets or anything,” said Nirmal Ranga, head of trading and technical analysis at ZebPay cryptocurrency exchange.
“What you’re seeing in the market is … fear, uncertainty and doubt. Technically, markets seem to have come up and there has to be a ground where we’ll get bitcoins in the future,” he told CNBC’s “Street Signs.” Asia “.
Cryptographic assets were hammered on Monday as trading platforms such as Celsius and Binance stopped withdrawals and some companies cut jobs.
Celsius said withdrawals, exchanges and transfers between accounts would be halted due to “extreme market conditions” and that the measure was aimed at “stabilizing liquidity and operations”.
“We are taking this action today to put Celsius in a better position to meet, over time, its withdrawal obligations,” the company said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, stopped bitcoin withdrawals for more than three hours “due to a blocked transaction that caused a delay.”
The market capitalization of cryptocurrencies fell below $ 1 trillion on Monday for the first time since February 2021, CoinMarketCap data showed. About $ 200 billion has been taken off the market in recent days.
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Cryptocurrency sales occur when investors largely avoided risky assets in a context of fears about a possible global recession, as major central banks around the world raise interest rates to control inflation.
U.S. Federal Reserve policy makers are now contemplating a 75-point rate hike later this week, according to CNBC’s Steve Liesman. This is greater than the 50 basis point increase that many traders had expected. The Wall Street Journal reported the story first.
Rising rates tend to make future gains on growth assets seem less attractive.
Bitcoin has fallen by almost 70% since its all-time high in November 2021.