The past couple of weeks have been turbulent in different senses with tension rising in various regions such as Lebanon and the spread of the infamous corona disease. Amid all this, the financial market has massively swinged dipping the value of both fiat and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC).
Normally, the cryptocurrency market escalates in value during times of crisis. However, this time round things have taken a twisted turn, cryptocurrencies have assumed a bearish run as traditional assets gain in the market.
The last twenty four hours have seen Bitcoin dip by 5.04 percent pushing the weekly drop to 10.72 percent. The price of Bitcoin at press time was $8,783.41 with a total market cap of $160.49 billion.Having consistently above the $50 billion mark, the market volume over the past twenty four hours fell to $52.5 billion.
Moving forward, the drop in value of the asset has been received with great surprise by the crypto community. Under normal circumstances, Bitcoin is considered as a safe haven asset during times of global turmoil. The fact that traditional assets are rising in value while cryptocurrencies are falling has sparked talks among the market participants. Wall Street finance reporter Frank Chaparo, gave his opinion on the falling BTC value. He said:
“This [Bitcoin] is still a very nascent, volatile asset class. If I’m an investor and I want predictability in my portfolio, I’m not going to be outsized allocating to bitcoin and other digital assets. Now, that doesn’t mean that this narrative of bitcoin being a hedge against global economic insecurity or political insecurity [is wrong]. That’s still something that could play out over the next ten, fifteen, twenty years.”
Altcoins Price Falls
In addition, the price of altcoins such as ETH, XRP, XLM among others also fell down compared to their value the previous week. Ethereum’s market performance went down by 4 percent while Ripple’s XRP fell by 6%. Additionally, the price of Bitcoin Cash, also dipped by 9 percent.
In conclusion, the spread of the deadly coronavirus has massively terrified people across the globe. The virus has claimed countless lives and has now spread to some parts of Europe. Italy is among the European nations that the infection has spread to.
