Friday, November 26, 2021 12:54 pm
Bitcoin is trading at a 22 percent discount compared to a high of $ 69,000 (£ 51,000) reached on November 10 after a new variant of Covid spooked the markets.
News that a highly transmissible and possibly vaccine-resistant variant of Covid-19 has spread to Hong Kong and Israel from southern Africa has prompted investors around the world to abandon high-risk investments. London's FTSE-100 index is down 2.7 percent today with losses led by aviation companies and hotel groups, while Tokyo's NIKKEI index is down 2.5 percent.
Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency market wiped out more than $ 200 billion of its market capitalization, dropping eight percent in the past 24 hours.
"This is a broad financial problem," said Charlie Morris, chief investment officer at analytics firm ByteTree.
"Bitcoin is correlated with other risk assets that have fallen today, including stocks and commodities such as oil, which have fallen due to fears of renewed closings in response to a new strain of Covid."
"Bitcoin is a risky asset and works best when financial markets are prospering," Morris added. "As we often see on a Bitcoin bear day, gold has risen slightly."
Trading around the $ 54k mark, Bitcoin is down 6.8 percent of its value today, while Ethereum is down 8.8 percent, Solana is down 10.43 percent, and Polkadot is down 10.41 percent. hundred.
The momentum behind the crypto markets seemed unstoppable earlier this month as the world's largest digital assets, Bitcoin and Ethereum, hit new all-time highs. The SEC's decision to approve Bitcoin futures ETFs was seen as a pivotal moment for the widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies.
Read more: Long-awaited Bitcoin update kicks in as miners keep hiding BTC
