Crypto Markets Down $50B as Bitcoin Retraces to $23K (Market Watch)

Following a few days of price increases, bitcoin reversed its trajectory and fell to and below a familiar sight of $23,000.

Most altcoins are also in the red today, including ETH slumping beneath $1,700 after painting a multi-month high north of $1,800.

BTC Back Down to $23K

After the positive end of last month, bitcoin calmed and entered last weekend at around $23,000. The asset failed to produce any significant price movements in either direction in the next two days and remained around that mark.

More volatility, though, came at the start of the current week when bitcoin spiked to and beyond $24,000 to tap a multi-day high. However, that was short-lived and the bears returned to town.

They pushed the cryptocurrency south to just under $23,000 once more. As of now, however, bitcoin has regained some traction and stands at that familiar level but its market cap has declined below $450 billion.

Bitcoin News

Despite recovering more than 30% since the mid-June drop to $17,500, Mike Novogratz is still uncertain whether BTC will be able to overcome $30,000 in the near-term future.

Amid the bitcoin and crypto bear market, Coinbase reported another quarter deep in the red with losses exceeding $1 billion.

Alts in Red Too

The alternative coins also marked local peaks in the past few days, including ETH, which jumped above $1,800 on hype in regards to the upcoming Merge. That was the asset’s highest price tag in approximately two months.

However, it failed to continue climbing and has dumped below $1,700 following a 5% daily decline.

Solana and Dogecoin are down by up to 6% in a day, while Ripple, Cardano, Shiba Inu, Polkadot, and MATIC have seen more modest declines.

The lower- and mid-cap alts are in no better shape, with APE, FLOW, FIL, and many others decreasing by up to 9-10% in a day.

As such, the crypto market cap has seen over $50 billion gone in the past two days and has returned below $1.1 trillion.

Industry News

Curve Finance became the latest DeFi protocol to be exploited, and the attacker managed to swipe nearly $600K in crypto.

A recent report claimed that the Merge has attracted institutional investors into ETH products as the positive inflows extended to a seventh consecutive week.

Speaking of the Merge, JPMorgan analysts claimed that it’s one of the two massive industry events that helped crypto stabilize in prices.