2024 has been a dream year for crypto investors. Until last week happened. In an unprecedented downward trend, $300 billion worth of value has been wiped out from the combined crypto market, which now has a valuation of $2.42 trillion. Of the 10 major cryptocurrencies, six have lost value in the last week. Of these Bitcoin and Ethereum are the major contributors. In this article, I will talk about last week’s crypto market correction. Buckle up for the action!
Bitcoin (BTC) Last Week
Compared to this time last week, the price of Bitcoin has crashed by over 10%. Despite JPMorgan analysts expressing bullish signs about Bitcoin, the market moved down eliminating $300 billion from the combined Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and crypto market capitalization. This is from last week’s high of $2.8 trillion in valuation when Bitcoin and the crypto market were turbo-charged by the debut of over a dozen Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on Wall Street. The new bitcoin ETFs have attracted billions of dollars with some being the fastest-growing ETFs in history. At $63.16K, BTC is now at its lowest level in two weeks and 13.5% below its high.
Ether (ETH) Last Week
Ether, the second largest cryptocurrency and popularly known by the name of its blockchain, Ethereum, is under selling pressure too. ETH has already retraced to $3300, wiping out all gains from March. The cryptocurrency is now expecting support levels at $3080 and $3000. Ethereum issuance dropped to its lowest level since 2022 following the rollout of the Dencun update last week. The ETH network has, however, reached annual highs in terms of the number of active users, transaction numbers, and transaction volume.
Solana (SOL) Last Week
Before this week, Solana has been trading north of $210, hitting and breaking 3-year highs day after day. SOL price is now at $171.82, nearly 25% down from last week. Crypto observers think that if a $168 level is reached, SOL prices will then more or less depend on bitcoin sentiment and global risk appetite.
The Markets
According to publicly available data, investments in crypto assets rose by a whopping $2.916 billion last week, breaking last week’s high of $2.685 billion. A similar pattern has been observed for 7 weeks in a row now. Notably, $2.896 billion of this week’s crypto investments went to Bitcoin while inflows on Ethereum dropped by $14 million. Investments in Solana decreased by $2.7 and that in funds that short Bitcoin went up by $26 million.
Meme Coins and Tokens
In a significant development, meme coins have once again created a buzz in the crypto space. This has resulted in an uptick in the token rate of the networks on which they are issued. The Solana- and Avalanche-based tokens marked their highest prices since 2021. SOL has once again become the trendiest crypto asset among traders, with new meme tokens being launched every other day.
Conclusion
Many think that Bitcoin is still in a bullish phase similar to what happened in 2021. So even believe that the current correction is healthy and removes the leveraged funds from the system. So, we were not as optimistic and warned the investors that the upcoming Bitcoin halving event in April may follow the same pattern as last time.
During the last halvings, Bitcoin price has dropped by 20% in 2020 and 40% in 2016, weeks before the event. Another cohort of crypto commentators thinks that since 93.6% of total Bitcoins have already been mined, miners now only have 1.34 million BTCs left to mine, this time the halving event may play out differently.
