Fed-Induced Volatility Pushed Bitcoin to New 3-Month Lows at $18K (Market Watch)

The price of bitcoin was rejected at $20,000 and slumped to $18,000 following the latest interest rate hike by the US Federal Reserve.

The altcoins experienced similar volatility, but most are actually trading in the green now. Once again, Ripple stands out as an impressive gainer.

Bitcoin’s New Low and Volatile Trading Day

The past several days were quite painful for the bitcoin bulls, and the culmination came on September 19, when the asset plummeted to a three-month low of $18,300.

However, it reacted rather positively at that point and bounced off to $19,000, where it spent most of the next few days. More volatility was expected yesterday as the US Fed was about to announce the latest increase in interest rates.

Just ahead of the event, BTC spiked to $20,000 but was quickly rejected once the Fed Chair outlined the 75 basis point hike. In a matter of minutes, bitcoin plunged to $18,100 – its lowest price position in over three months.

Nevertheless, BTC bounced off once again and currently trades at around $19,000, but its market cap is still struggling at $365 billion. This extreme volatility has resulted in more than $300 million worth of liquidations from over-leveraged traders on a daily scale.

XRP Steals The Show (Again)

The alternative coins had a similar faith as BTC yesterday, with a lot of enhanced price fluctuations. Now, though, most trade in the green, except for Ethereum.

It has been a week since the second-largest blockchain transition from PoW to PoS, and the native token’s price has been primarily struggling within this timeframe. ETH went from over $1,600 last Thursday to $1,200 yesterday. Although it trades $100 higher as of now, the asset is still 3% down on the day.

Binance Coin, Cardano, Solana, Dogecoin, and Polkadot are with minor gains now. Ripple is once again the best performer from the larger-cap alts, with a notable 7% increase. As such, XRP currently stands well above $0.4, perhaps fueled by the latest developments on the Ripple-SEC legal case.

Uniswap, ATOM, Algorand, ICP, FIL, and CHZ have also gained impressive percentages on a daily scale.

As such, the crypto market cap has increased to $930 billion after dipping below $900 billion yesterday.