Cryptos Drop As Fed And War Play Spoilsport

By RTTNews Staff Writer | Published: 2/17/2022 9:34 AM ET

Cryptocurrencies continued to decline as situation in eastern Europe remains tense. While the FOMC minutes implied only a measured and data-dependent lift off to interest rates, nervousness lingered as markets weighed the ferocity of the transition to a tight monetary policy regime. The Fed is expected to hike rates in March and start the shrinking of its Balance Sheet thereafter.

Gold touched an intra-day high of $1899.90 per troy ounce, a level last seen in June 2021.

Overall market capitalization is at $1.92 trillion, around 2.1 percent lower than the levels 24 hours ago.

Bitcoin is currently trading at $42,369.48 after trading at a high of $44,309.03 in the past 24 hours.

Ethereum also traded at a high of $3,177.36 in the past 24 hours. It is currently trading at $3,008.39.

BNB(BNB), XRP (XRP), Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), Terra (LUNA), Dogecoin (DOGE) and Polygon (MATIC) have declined less than 2 percent in the past 24 hours.

Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Polkadot (DOT) are trading with losses between 2 and 5 percent.

SHIBA INU (SHIB) has bucked the trend and managed to gain 0.50 percent.

Bitcoin commands 41.8 percent of the market whereas Bitcoin and Ethereum together command 60.5 percent of the overall crypto market. The top 5 cryptos account for more than 70 percent of the overall crypto market whereas the top-10 cryptos account for close to 80 percent of the aggregate crypto market capitalization.

At current levels of market capitalization, Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), BNB (BNB), XRP (XRP), Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Avalanche (AVAX), Terra (LUNA), Dogecoin (DOGE), Polkadot (DOT), Polygon (MATIC), TerraUSD (UST), Litecoin (LTC), Cosmos (ATOM), and NEAR Protocol (NEAR) are the top-ranking crypto coins.

Compared to a fortnight ago, Avalanche (AVAX) has moved up 3 notches while XRP (XRP) has climbed 2 notches. Litecoin’s (LTC) rally helped it rise 1 slot in the overall rankings.

On the contrary, Polkadot (DOT) slipped two slots while Cardano ( ADA), Solana (SOL), Terra (LUNA) and Cosmos (ATOM) dropped one rank each.

In the tokens category, Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), Binance USD (BUSD), SHIBA INU (SHIB), Crypto.com coin (CRO), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Dai (DAI), Chainlink (LINK), Uniswap (UNI), FTX Token (FTT), Decentraland (MANA), UNUS SED LEO (LEO), Bitcoin BEP2 (BTCB), The SandBox (SAND) and Axie Infinity (AXS) rank in the order of market capitalization.

Except for LEO which jumped one rank, pushing BTCB one rank down, rankings in the tokens category remain the same as was a couple of weeks ago.

In the category-wise market capitalization dominance, Smart Contracts aggregate to 28.30 percent; Stablecoins dominate 9.25 percent, DeFi is at 7.16 percent; Centralized Exchanges add up to 5.21 percent; Web 3 sums up to 2.87 percent; Research grosses 2.46 percent; NFTs account for 2.37 percent; Memes command 1.92 percent; Scaling enjoys 1.58 percent; Metaverse commands 1.58 percent; Gaming amounts to 1.47 percent; while Decentralized Exchanges follows with 1.37 percent market capitalization.

Meanwhile, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development (RECD) has announced that it would be cutting a significant percentage of taxes on Bitcoin mining activities within the region. Russia currently ranks third in the world in terms of global mining capacities.

War clouds looming over eastern Europe has clouded the sentiment for the crypto market as well. The darker clouds on the horizon are however the scope of crypto regulations ranging from outright bans to tough tax regimes. The turbulence that these developments can trigger will also have to be factored in into the likely price trajectory.

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Article written by an RTT News Staff Writer, and posted on the RTT News.com website.

Article reposted on Markethive by Jeffrey Sloe