HONG KONG / LONDON, May 9 (Reuters) – Bitcoin fell to its lowest level since July 2021 on Monday as declining stock markets continued to hurt cryptocurrencies, which are currently traded on so-called riskier assets such as technology stocks.
Bitcoin fell to as much as $ 32,763.16 just before 11:00 GMT, in its fifth consecutive fall session.
The cryptocurrency has fallen 13% so far in May and has lost more than half of its value since reaching its all-time high of $ 69,000 last November.
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“I think everything within cryptocurrency is still classified as a risky asset, and similar to what we saw at Nasdaq, most cryptocurrencies are under attack,” said Matt Dibb, executive director of Singapore’s crypto platform Stack Funds.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq (.IXIC) fell 1.5% last week and has lost 22% to date, hurt by the outlook that sustained inflation will force the US Federal Reserve to increase rates despite a slowdown in growth. Nasdaq futures fell a further 2.3% on Monday. MKTS-GLOB read more
Dibb said other factors in the weekend’s decline – bitcoin closed at about $ 36,000 on Friday – were notoriously low crypto market liquidity over the weekend, as well as short-lived fears that an algorithmic stabilcoin called Terra USD (UST) could lose its link to the dollar .
Stablecoins are digital tokens linked to other traditional assets, often the US dollar.
The crypto community is closely monitoring the UST because of the new way it maintains its 1: 1 dollar fixation and because its founders set plans to build a $ 10 billion bitcoin reserve to support a stable coin, meaning UST volatility could potentially spill over in the bitcoin markets. Read more
Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, which supports the Ethereum network, fell to as much as $ 2,360 on Monday, the lowest since late February.
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Edited by Kim Coghill
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