Bitcoin price drops more than 8% as inflation spooks markets
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and other major altcoins dropped significantly over the weekend, as U.S. equity markets faced one of their worst weeks in months.
See related article: Has Bitcoin become a victim of its own success?
Fast facts
- Bitcoin dropped 8.3% over the past 24 hours to US$25,240.08, according to CoinMarketCap data, as higher-than-expected inflation led to market concerns over the Fed acting more strongly to counter inflation.
- This comes amid the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization increasingly correlating with equity markets.
- The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said the 12-month U.S. consumer price index rose 8.6% in May from a year ago, its highest increase since December 1981 and surpassing the 8.3% increase expected by analysts polled by Dow Jones.
- Friday’s 2.9% drop for the S&P 500 was its biggest weekly loss since January. The stocks benchmark has dropped 18% in 2022, its worst start to a year since 1962.
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2.7% with the Nasdaq losing 3.5%.
- Bitcoin is now down more than 63.2% from an all-time high of US$68,789.63 on Nov. 10, 2021.
- Ethereum, the second-largest coin by market cap, was down 8.4% to US$1,343.50 at the time of publishing.
- Cardano and Solana saw the biggest losses among the top 10, with the former dropping 10.5% at US$0.4712 with Solana falling to US$28.58, down 12% in the past 24 hours.
- Market volatility, including in cryptocurrencies, is expected to remain high, with analysts expecting a larger-than-anticipated rate increase of 0.75 percentage point.
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