In today’s crypto bloodba- sorry news, Bitcoin plummeted to two-month lows of US$18,800 while Ethereum, which looked to be on a roll, encountered a stiff resistance that brought its exchange price cruising down to US$1,500.
Time will decide if the price drop is a blip or the start of a ‘Septembear’ downtrend but for now, global market capitalisation is trending below US$940bn.
The plunge is likely due to a strong US dollar that surged on confirmation of Federal Reserve rate hikes and ongoing safe-haven demand for the greenback at the expense of equities and non-US currencies.
Network tokens unsurprisingly felt the pinch, with Cardano, Solana, Polkadot, Polygon and the smaller cap all shedding mid-to-high single digits.
After soaring in the past few days, Ethereum Classic – a legacy alternative to Ethereum – dropped 16% to bring its market cap down to US$4.65bn.
The decentralised finance (DeFi) market also took a beating, with Curve, Compound Finance, Uniswap and Aave losing over 10% of their respective market caps.
Total value locked across the whole DeFi space fell close to 5%.
Investors now look to see if the markets can offer up a correction; in some positive news, the one-hour candlestick charts are turning green at the time of writing.
Elsewhere in the news
Ethereum’s final upgrade before next week’s landmark Merge suffered a few hiccups, as around 5% of network validators went offline during the process.
That said, most commentators including Gnosis founder Martin Köppelmann said it was “nothing dramatic”.
Law firm Roche Freedman has been asked by fellow plaintiffs to remove itself from a class-action lawsuit against Tether and parent company Bitfinex concerning market manipulation.
The request follows incriminating video leaks of name partner Kyle Roche released last week implying misconduct while representing blockchain developer Ava Labs.