Bitcoin Drops Below 40K; Crypto Market Sheds Over $100 Billion in 24 Hours

After briefly rallying to new highs on the back of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the value of digital assets like Bitcoin and others has recorded massive losses.

Within the last 24-hours, the price movement of Bitcoin dropped by over 5 percent, pushing its price below the $40,000 threshold. Earlier this week, the coin was still trading at around $44,000, making this a steep drop.

In the early hours Friday, Bitcoin was reportedly trading around $41,000, but soon dropped to $39,000 due to a sell-off wave – leading analysts to predict a further drop in the value over the weekend, likely dropping to around $38,000 according to Rekt Capital.

The company believes that Bitcoin’s movement may have a similar run as in the past, when it finished a week at $43,000 and its “price rejected to the red $38,000 area for a rest.” With the recent drop, it’s hard to say whether or not Bitcoin will climb back up to $50,000 by the end of the month, as some have previously predicted.

Altcoins drop too

While Bitcoin only had a 0.6% drop in price in the past week, Ethereum had a 4.4% decrease. This showed that many crypto investors are opting for Bitcoin above other cryptocurrencies.

Other top ten digital assets by market cap like BNB, Solana, Cardano, Avalanche, and even high flying Terra lost above 3% of their value. The only exception to this drop, however, was Ripple’s XRP, which gained roughly 3.2% of its value.

In total, the industry has shed over $100 billion as the market cap of the space dropped to $1.8 trillion after losing over 4 percent within the last 24 hours.

Russia’s growing isolation

In the wake of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, crypto markets, including Bitcoin, appear to be clearly responding proportionately to the unfortunate series of events that continue to unfold as the United States and its allies continue to look for ways to isolate Russia from its financial resources.

Following the economic sanctions imposed on the nation, as well as the recent launch of ‘KleptoCapture‘ by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Biden Administration, some market experts still believe the country can evade many of these sanctions through the use of crypto – despite exchanges stating that they are blacklisting known addresses of politicians, public figures, and allies who are willing to help Russian actors continue funneling money.

While evasion concerns aren’t substantiated, it has certainly led to fears of harsher crypto regulations.

Bitcoin is currently trading at $39,099 as of press time.

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