Bitcoin fell below $50,000 and dragged other cryptocurrencies with it – investors are getting rid of risky assets

At the end of last week, the Bitcoin rate dropped below $60 thousand per coin. Today, the downward trend has continued and the value of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency dropped below $50 thousand per coin during the day. After this, Bitcoin was able to win back a little and by the time of writing this note its rate was around $53,602 per coin (data from CoinDesk).

Image source: Kandinsky

According to the TradingView service, the price of Bitcoin has decreased for four days in a row and today reached $49,112 per coin. Following the most popular cryptocurrency, the value of other digital assets also fell. For example, the Ethereum rate dropped to $2060 per coin, which is the worst indicator since January 3, 2024. Now the price of Ethereum is around $2399 per coin. Against this backdrop, the CoinDesk 20 Index, which tracks some of the most liquid non-stablecoin tokens, fell nearly 20%.

Ethereum’s nearly 25% drop was the worst one-day drop for the token since May 2021. The reason for the negative dynamics was rumors that a large market maker for cryptocurrencies, Jump Trading, was getting rid of its existing assets. This is because a cryptocurrency wallet believed to belong to Jump Trading transferred 17,576 Ethereum coins worth $46 million to centralized exchanges.

The prolonged fall in the value of cryptocurrencies is due to the fact that investors are actively getting rid of risky assets. This is due to a large-scale decline in financial markets due to fears of a global recession and rising tensions in the Middle East. Thus, the Japanese Nikkei 225 index fell by 12.4%, the Stoxx Europe 600 index fell by more than 3%, and S&P 500 futures lost 3.3%.