This Week in Coins: Ethereum and Bitcoin Keep Bleeding as Telegram Drama Continues
There's depressing news for those hoping the price of crypto markets would improve this week. Depressing news for nearly all investors, it would seem.
Bitcoin
continued to drop, and hard, this week. Over the past seven days, the
price of the asset
has descended by more than 9% and—after dipping as low as $52,690 on Friday—rolled into the weekend trading hands for $53,229, according to
CoinGecko
.
That’s significantly lower than its 2021 record of $69,044—let alone its March all-time high of $73,747.
The price dip comes as economic data
shows
that the U.S. labor market might not be as strong as expected, and investors
fast cash out
of the newly-approved
spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs)
.
Ethereum’s price
was hit harder: the coin
hit
its lowest price of 2024 and ended the week priced at $2,178 after tumbling more than 11%.
Decrypt
reported
that Ethereum-related investments NFTs have shed a depressing amount of their value over the years and that online marketplace for the digital goods OpenSea
could be in trouble
as the Securities and Exchange Commission has it in its crosshairs.
It wasn’t just crypto that took a beating, either: U.S. equities also plunged hard, with tech stocks like chip giant Nvidia
posting
its biggest daily market cap drop on Tuesday.
All eyes are now on the Federal Reserve and its next meeting later this month. Investors expect the central bank will finally slash interest rates but are anxious about how big the cut will be—leading to volatility in the markets with any new data that drops.
In other news, crypto-friendly messaging app Telegram’s founder and CEO Pavel Durov
finally spoke out
following
his arrest
by French authorities last month. He said that Telegram was not a criminal safe-haven and that the app had worked to take down illegal content in the past.
The
price of TON
, the cryptocurrency closely associated with the app, is one of the worst-performing coins, having dipped by 14% in seven days. It’s now priced at $4.59.