Bitcoin drops by 30% and altcoins suffer value halving

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This Week’s Summary

The Crypto Market ends the week at a total market capitalization of $155 billion

Bitcoin value crashes by 30%, reaches $4,185 before rising above $5,000 again

Ethereum loses almost 50% of its value and now trades at little over $126

XRP trades as low as $0.11 mid-week before recovering at $0.15 on Sunday

The stock and equity markets experience new historical lows since the 2008 crisis

Covid-19 forces countries to shut borders and the U.S. to declare a national emergency

Crypto Trends 09th – 15th March 2020: PERFORMANCE & ANALYSIS

The last week has been the worst one for the cryptocurrency market since 2013 when Bitcoin saw a decline of over 50% in value. Back then, amateur investors rushed the digital currency to a bubble burst. This time, the reason for the sudden drop is less financial and more societal or as Edward Snowden puts it “too much panic and too little reason.”

The rapid spread of Covid-19 took by surprise many of the governments that had not previously considered it a serious threat. Italy closed its borders at the beginning of the week, which prompted other states into taking similar measures of confinement.

The major hit for the virtual assets market came on Thursday after a quick series of official announcements with global implications.

Firstly, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the new spread of Coronavirus a pandemic on Wednesday. A day later, U.S. President Donald Trump declared a National Emergency. After banning air travel from continental Europe earlier this week, the President expanded it to include the United Kingdom and Ireland on Saturday.

This rapid escalation had a major impact on the financial markets. The stock market saw its biggest drop since 1987 and the bears took full control of the equity market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 20% in the last month. Cryptocurrencies and other digital assets also lost a great deal of value as their correlation with oil and gold weighed massively yet again.

Just a few weeks ago, Bitcoin was looking to break the $10,500 resistance level, and now it is trading at $5,359 after a continuous string of blows that had very little to do with its previous market performance or sheer value.

The news of a ravaging pandemic and announcements from the U.S. President forced a drop so steep that the popular crypto was trading for as low as $3,600 mid-week on some exchanges. As soon as Friday, the 13th rolled along, BTC managed to recover a bit and climbed above the $5,000 barrier, but the bears still keep a strong grip on it.

Most of the altcoins responded negatively to the crashes on financial markets and Bitcoin’s plunge in value.

Ethereum started the week trading at $235. Just 3 days later, it dropped to almost $97 before regaining a bit of momentum on the weekend. It is now trading at $126.27.

XRP was trading consistently on Tuesday at around $0.21. As the news of a global pandemic broke out, its value dropped by almost 50% to $0.11. At the moment, it climbed back to $0.152, but the forecast is not rosy for Ripple’s virtual asset.

What’s in the News?

The NY Fed announced plans to pump $50 billion more into financial markets

Euro Pacific Capital CEO and chief global strategist Peter Schiff says that the coronavirus recession might be worse than the 2008 financial crisis

A Bitcoin scam leads to numerous Nigerians to lose millions of Naira (local currency)

Tyler Winklevoss, co-founder, and CEO of Gemini believes that Bitcoin will emerge even stronger from the current crisis

Spain declares national lockdown and several other countries close their borders in an attempt to stop the coronavirus from spreading

At the time of this writing, the Covid-19 pandemic has infected almost 162,588 people and killed 6,069 worldwide

Next Week’s Market Forecast

In the upcoming week, investors will be watching equities markets closely as cryptocurrency and other global markets seem to be trading while keeping an eye on each other’s progress.

Bitcoin is trading above $5,000 at the moment, but fears of its value reverting to December 2018’s trading price of $3,200 persist for many investors. Ethereum and XRP have shown a consistent improvement against BTC in the past few hours, but they are far from deserving a positive forecast for the next week.

With half of the world being paralyzed by the Covid-19 pandemic, no crypto-related events are happening next week that are worth going outside.

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