But the largest cryptocurrency by market cap was way way off last week’s levels amid light weekend trading and escalating tensions about a possible war with Russia; ether and most other major cryptos dropped.
Bitcoin inched upward on Sunday but remained well off where it started the week amid investors’ concerns about ongoing inflationary pressure and a possible war with Russia.
At the time of publication, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was trading at about $42,200 up slightly over the past 24 hours Ether and other major altcoins fell. Ether was trading at about $2,880, off slightly.
“Overall, crypto is down this week, including a slide in prices Friday that some believe is correlated to reports of Russian military exercises indicating that an invasion and possible resulting war is imminent,” said Joe DiPasquale, the CEO of fund manager BitBull Capital.
Trading volume for the past week was about half its level of a year ago, leading to the high price volatility. “This week has seen the prices of major cryptos both rise and fall sharply,” DiPasquale said.
Crypto’s choppy performance has largely emulated major stock indexes, which fell sharply on Friday. The S&P 500 dropped nearly 2% on Friday and the tech-focused Nasdaq plummeted 2.7%.
To be sure, bitcoin and ether are up for February after a lackluster first month of the year. But Solana and other altcoins are down “due to jitters over insecurities in the wormhole protocol,” DiPasquale noted.
He added that “anything can happen” if bitcoin approaches $40,000 because of the lower trading volumes. “If the support. line holds, we could see a large bounce, but it does not, we could see a significant drop,” he said.