BTC, ETH Open With Value Dents; Tether, USD Coin See Small Gains

Bitcoin values seem to be slipping down the price ladder once again, after it bagged multiple gains last week. BTC prices dropped by 4.5 percent as it opened for trading on Tuesday, February 22. Presently, Bitcoin is priced $39,734 (roughly Rs. 29.5 lakh) as per Indian exchange CoinSwitch Kuber. Price of Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, also moved similarly on international exchanges. Falling by 5.44 percent, Bitcoin is now trading at around $36,969 (roughly Rs. 27.5 lakh) on Coinbase, Binance, and CoinMarketCap.

Bitcoin values remain hit by market volatility amid geo-political tensions heating up between Ukraine and Russia. Presently, Bitcoin is struggling to near its last set all-time high of $68,327 (roughly Rs. 51 lakh) that it touched in November last year.

Ether also mimicked BTC's trajectory today. According to Gadgets 360's crypto price tracker, ETH value dipped by 4.5 percent. The biggest altcoin by market cap, Ether is trading at $2,678 (roughly Rs. 2 lakh) on exchanges such as CoinDCX and WazirX.

ETH values are lower on international exchanges such as Coinbase and CoinMarketCap, where the asset saw losses of over 7.3 percent, dragging its trade value to $2,523 (roughly Rs. 1.5 lakh).

Ether had also touched its previous all-time-high of $4,811 (roughly Rs. 3.5 lakh) in November last year.

Majority altcoins opened with losses on the price charts today.

These include meme coins Shiba Inu, Dogecoin, as well as other cryptocurrencies like Binance Coin, Ripple, Cardano, Solana, Polkadot, and more.

It should be noted that the dips registered by these cryptocurrencies are not exactly minor, ranging substantially between six percent to 14 percent.

Tether, USD Coin, and Binance USD saw small gains of 0.40 percent, 0.43 percent, and 0.02 percent respectively.

Industry leaders such as Vitalik Buterin are hopeful that the lacklustre market would instead bolster long-term sustainable projects and prevent short-term speculative attention.

At this time, institutional investments in the crypto sector could revive the price charts, the CoinDCX research team told Gadgets 360.

“We saw the total value of crypto fundraising deals increase by 645 percent in 2021 from the year before, amounting to $34.3 billion (roughly Rs. 2,56,323 crore), we can expect the strong institutional support to maintain inflows of funding, minimising the impact of the upcoming crypto winter on innovations in the sector,” the CoinDCX team said.

Recently, sovereign wealth fund Temasek and leading technology venture capital firm Sequoia Capital poured in hefty investments in crypto projects, fuelling trust and credibility in the industry.

Meanwhile, the total market cap of the crypto sector stands at $1.64 trillion (roughly Rs. 122,55,720 crore), having inched back from its last week's valuation of $1.72 trillion (roughly Rs. 128,53,560 crore) as per CoinMarketCap.

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