KEY POINTS
Ethereum dropped to $1,462 in the early trading hours of today to reach its lowest point since January 2021, presenting yet another sign of a bear market.
ETH has been struggling since the start of the year, but this new low means it’s now about 70% below the all-time high it reached in November. In the past 60 days alone, the major altcoin has declined by over 50%.
The fall in ETH value is likely due to several factors ranging from the UST/LUNA crash to the overall crypto market performance.
Since the UST crash, the price of Ethereum has been down by close to half, and weekly candles for the last 10 weeks have been red.
But one factor that played a significant role in the price decline is its postponed Merge. For years, Ethereum has promised a switch to proof of Stake. However, the switch, scheduled for June this year, was eventually postponed, with projections now targeting August to November.
The postponement of the Merge means that Ethereum users have to wait for more months before seeing any of the promised improvements on the network.
However, the decline in value isn’t peculiar to ETH. If anything, ETH only mirrors a broader market decline that has seen most major cryptocurrencies trade below half their all-time highs.
In the last 24 hours, the crypto market cap had dropped by 7%, and it looks like it might drop below $1 trillion for the first time since January 2021.
Already, the market cap has shed about $2 trillion of its vault since it crossed the $3 trillion mark in November 2021. Bitcoin is trading at $27k after losing its support at $29k and is down 60% from its ATH.
Other top 10 digital assets by market cap equally have negative performance. Binance BNB is down 62.5% from ATH, Cardano ADA is down by 83%, DOGE by 91%, and SOL by 87%.
Analysts fear that there will be a further decline in the value of these assets with some expecting BTC to find support at around $25k, but a sharp decline could see it drop to around $17k.
The growing inflation and fear of further hikes in the interest rate are also part of the factors motivating this decline.
What do you think about this subject?
- Bein Crypto
