Cryptocurrency prices fell on Monday while continuing the momentum built over the weekend following Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's statement that interest rates would remain high in view of elevated inflation.
Bitcoin, the largest virtual coin by market value, fell as much as 0.93 percent to $19,841, the fifth day of declines. The token is down almost 58.7 percent from the year's high of $48,234 hit on March 28.
Ether, the second largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization, fell 2.56 percent to 1,453 over the previous day, continuing a decline from around $2,000 a few weeks ago.
Other popular digital tokens, which tend to move in tandem with bitcoin, also fell. Shiba Inu, the second-largest meme coin, plunged 2.70 percent to $0.000012, Solana tumbled 3.01 percent to $30.64 whereas Dogecoin, the most followed meme coin, declined 3.53 percent to $0.061521, according to Coindesk data at 16:04 IST.
“Crypto markets will continue to witness the bear phase as market liquidity continues to deteriorate due to the hawkish policy of the FED. Increasing pressure from continuous liquidation and waning consumer confidence is going to make things worse in upcoming months,” says Gaurav Mehta, Founder of Catax app.
The global cryptocurrency market cap decreased to 1.29 percent to $953.58 billion in the last 24 hours. However, the total cryptocurrency trading volume increased 22.79 percent to $66.09 billion and out of a total market cap, bitcoin's dominance is 39.81 percent, an increase of 39.81 percent over the day, as per CoinMarketCap data at 16:08 IST.
“Bitcoin returned from the Mt.Gox hack to investors and traders is expected to be liquidated by old investors putting further pressure on price. Investors should wait for the market to stabilise and they will have ample investment opportunities in upcoming times, these are highly uncertain and turbulent times for risky investment," Mehta added.