It is not a good beginning to the last week of February as the cryptocurrency market enters a major correction. In the last 24-hours, the overall cryptocurrency market cap lost over $13 billion. At the press time, the overall cryptocurrency market cap stands at $129 billion. Furthermore, today’s fall has wiped-out last week’s entire gains as visible from the below weekly chart on CoinMarketCap.
Bitcoin (BTC) has lost 8.33% at the press time to slide below $3900 levels. Bitcoin is currently trading at $3854 with a market cap of $67.5 billion. After consolidating for a few weeks at the $3600-$3700 levels, Bitcoin attained a much-needed 10% rally last week. However, today’s sharp pull-back brings Bitcoin close to today’s previous consolidation zone.
Altcoins Take a Major Plunge
Ethereum (ETH), on the other hand, lost a massive 15.38% over the last 24-hours. The second-largest cryptocurrency has pulled-back below $140 levels with its market cap slipping below $15 billion. The Ethereum chart also shows that it has lost all of its last week’s gains.
XRP has lost just over 10% at the press time but manages to hold above $0.30 price. Its market cap has currently reduced to $12.5 billion. With today’s price fall, XRP loses $1.5 billion in market cap.
Despite losing over 15%, EOS still continues to maintain its fourth position on the rankings chart. EOS is trading at $3.59 with a market cap of $3.3 billion. Even at this price, EOS’s gains over the last month stands at over 50%.
Litecoin (LTC) has also lost over 15% and is trading at a price of $45.04 with a market cap of 2.7 billion. The cryptocurrency still has a place in the top five cryptocurrencies by market cap.
Looking to the massive plunge in the altcoin space while losing in double-digit percentage, it looks like Bitcoin has managed to fairly hold well today.
Expert Analysis and Views
Although Bitcoin recovery started last week, popular analyst and crypto trader Alex Krüger hinted at the falling retail interest. He said that for the public interest to come back, Bitcoin needs a sustained rally over $6K. In his tweet, Krüger wrote:
“Retail interest is gone for now, and for moments trading volumes resemble a cemetery. Bitcoin google trends are at Apr/2017 levels and # of tweets are at 2016 lows. For a sustained upwards trend, through 6K, need public interest to come back. This will take time.”
He also stated that Bitcoin price may crash again, but looks positive for the long term. He wrote:
“Prices may crash again. After all, bitcoin’s demand is almost entirely speculative, and natural sellers (miners, exchanges) will always sell”.
eToro’s senior market analyst Mati Greenspan wrote:
“What goes up must come down and that which pumps must eventually dump. That last sell-off is a sobering reminder that crypto is extremely volatile and high risk. Let’s see if we can hold here $3,800 would be a nice place to build support.”
