Bitcoin has continued to lose value in the last 24 hours, dipping below $41,000 for the first time in five days. With significant price losses from Ethereum and Solana, the cryptocurrencies are once again in the red, with ATOM being the only one in the green.
The crypto industry’s entire market capitalization has dropped by nearly 4% as a result of Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine. Bitcoin has also declined over 4% in the last 24 hours, dropping from around $44,000 yesterday to $41,100 this morning.
According to CoinGecko data, the leading cryptocurrency has since regained some of its losses and is now trading at slightly over $41,600.
After the US and most other Western nations stated they would not directly intervene in the Russia-Ukraine conflict on February 28, bitcoin began its largest daily green candle in over a year, climbing by over $6,000 and reaching $45,000.
Following that, BTC temporarily rose over the aforementioned level, setting a fresh 3-week high. However, the bears returned to the scene, and it was unable to conquer that level decisively.
The cryptocurrency began to lose value, eventually falling below $41,000 just a few hours ago. The asset has regained some ground and is now trading above that level, although it is still down by about 4% on a 24-hour scale.
As a result, the company’s market capitalization has dropped below $800 billion. It’s worth mentioning that the figure recently surpassed $850 billion.
After nearly crossing the psychologically critical $3,000 milestone on Thursday afternoon, Ethereum is down over 5%. The smart contracts platform has slowly lost points since then, through the night and into this morning. It is currently valued at $2,740.
Both assets recovered from significantly higher losses at the end of February, resulting in these losses. On February 24, Bitcoin plunged to slightly over $34,000 and Ethereum to $2,300.
Other digital assets aren’t faring any better. Solana is the market’s biggest loser among the top ten largest cryptocurrencies, with its native token, SOL, down over 6.8% on the day and now trading at just over $92.
Polkadot and Avalanche, two popular “Ethereum-killers,” have also appeared to be bearish. Both cryptocurrencies have lost about 3.5 percent in the last 24 hours.
Popular crypto-related equities like Coinbase, PayPal, and Block aren’t offering much protection to investors either. Coinbase (COIN) has dropped more than 8%, Block (SQ) has dropped 8%, and PayPal (PYPL) has dropped about 5%.
The crypto market has been rocked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The incidents have triggered calls for crypto exchanges to address vulnerabilities in the sweeping set of financial penalties on Russia, in addition to adverse market action.
However, former USA presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has expressed her disappointment that cryptocurrency exchanges did not do more to protect Russian users.
Recently, in an interview on the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, she said:
“I was disappointed to see that some of the so-called crypto exchanges, not all of them, but some of them, are refusing to end transactions with Russia.”
In the midst of these, Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken have decided not to prohibit all Russian users, stating that there are no legal reasons for doing so.