Cryptocurrency prices fell on Thursday afternoon along with major stock market indexes.
Bitcoin fell to $36,431.57 as of 5 p.m. ET, down 8.4% from Wednesday, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Ethereum fell 6.4% to $2,754.37.
Out of the top 30 cryptocurrencies listed by CoinDesk, 29 are down on the day.
Aside from the short-term sell-off in January, the bitcoin price hasn’t been this low since last July, when it traded as low as $29,000. The largest cryptocurrency is now down about 47% from its November record high of $68,991.
On Wednesday, the central bank announced half point increase rate. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said there could be a half-point increase in interest rates in the summer months, but officials are not considering a three-quarter point increase.
That sent stocks higher on Wednesday, but they returned that gain on Thursday, with the Nasdaq Composite falling 5%.
During the past two years, More professional traders have found their way into the crypto market. The effect of that is that crypto assets have traded more in line with other riskier assets, like growth and tech stocks.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite is down more than 21% this year, while bitcoin is also down 21%. Thursday’s sell-off also topped a bad April for crypto prices. Bitcoin’s market value dropped 17% to $716 billion, according to research firm CryptoCompare.
WSJ’s Dion Rabouin explains why Wall Street is betting big on crypto right now and what that means for the new asset class and its future. Photo compilation: Elizabeth Smelov
With Thursday’s sell-off, bitcoin’s total market value has dropped to around $690 billion, according to CoinDesk.
The widening range of risky assets has hit the crypto market especially severely, reduce everything from bitcoin to NFT. It is also beginning to have an effect on companies in the industry. Crypto companies surged at the start of the year, capped when some paid out millions of dollars to run ads during the Super Bowl. But the momentum has faded since then.
Because
Coinbase Global Inc.,
One of the Super Bowl advertisers, mobile and desktop web traffic fell 26% in the first quarter from a year earlier, according to web analytics firm Similarweb Ltd. Mobile app installs in March were down 67% compared to April 2021, the month the company went public.
Analysts forecast Coinbase’s first-quarter earnings per share to be $0.00, according to FactSet, down from $3.05 a year ago. The company reports earnings on Tuesday.
Write to Paul Vigna at [email protected]
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Appeared on May 6, 2022, print edition as ‘The Fall of Bitcoin and Other Digital Currencies.’
