Cryptocurrencies crashed as the threat of Russia invading Ukraine escalated amid border skirmishes, resulting in the crypto investor community offloading their risky digital assets to protect portfolios against further price drops.
On Friday, US President Joe Biden said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had decided to invade Ukraine and that a military strike could happen in days.
Bitcoin (BTC) dropped 6% last week as the standoff between Russia and Ukraine continues to spook investors globally. BTC briefly traded above $44,500 mid-week before escalating geo-political tensions affected financial markets. BTC is now trading just below the psychological level of $40,000 with the overall crypto market cap at $1.81 trillion.
Ethereum (ETH) continues to be affected by BTC’s price movements and has shed nearly 7% this week to trade around the $2,700 level. All the top 20 cryptocurrencies are in the red on a weekly timeframe except Avalanche (AVAX) with a 3% increase.
Barring Solana and Terra, all other top digital tokens were trading in lower. Avalanche tanked about 5 percent, whereas Bitcoin dropped 2 percent to below $40,000. Among gainers, Solana zoomed about 5 percent.
The global crypto market cap dropped about 2 percent to the $1.78 trillion mark. On the contrary, the total crypto market volume jumped more than 31 percent to $70.68 billion.
The cryptocurrency and the stock market have taken a tumble again due to geopolitical risks. The markets had slightly recovered when news of the Russian army withdrawing had surfaced, however, the situation has not improved, said WazirX Trade Desk.
The fear in the markets has started to set in after the United States mentioned that an invasion is likely to happen, he added. “On the other hand, Bitcoin’s fundamentals are improving. The Bitcoin hash rate is hitting an all-time high, adoption is on the uptrend and the need for Bitcoin is on the rise,” it added.
The second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Ethereum remained flat at $2,722.96.
Prices of all other major cryptos also dipped. XRP was down by 0.09 percent, Avalanche fell by 2.24 percent, Stellar fell by 0.01 percent, and Polygon fell by 0.09 percent.
Solana was up by 7.78 percent, Terra was up by 3.90 percent, Cardano was up by 0.50 percent, Polkadot 0.96 percent, and Dogecoin was up 1.17 percent.
“Bitcoin and Ethereum sank below US$39,000 and US$3,000 over the past 24 hours. All major altcoins are also running in red over the weekend. BTC remains in negative with an increase in the selling pressure for past few weeks,” Edul Patel, CEO, and Co-founder, Mudrex said.
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