Ethereum price crashes as major market meltdown continues to unfold
Over the last 24 hours, Ethereum has lost more than 5% of its value
- Analysts believe that the passing of the US infrastructure bill earlier this week could have had a huge role to play in the ongoing financial onslaught.
- Searches related to the term non-fungible token (NFT) are currently at their all-time high on Google.
- The total market cap of the crypto sector has dropped from AUD$4.15 trillion to AUD$3.29 trillion seemingly overnight.
Ethereum has regained a small amount of this week's losses, gaining 2.2% in the last 24-hour trading period, despite a weekly loss of 8.3%. The wider cryptocurrency market is in a downtrend, with Bitcoin facing similar losses of 8% this week.
The above-stated volatility has resulted in AUD$274 million (US$200 mil) worth of ETH futures being liquidated. Experts state that the United States infrastructure bill approved earlier this week could have played a major role in this development. The bill states that every digital currency transaction above US$10,000 must be reported to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). However, due to a lack of clarity in its wording, the law does not make it clear whether this rule applies to individual crypto owners or businesses using blockchain tech as well.
Another reason for the ongoing bloodbath could be the United States Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) decision to reject VanEck's spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund application request, claiming that the offering could give rise to a number of "fraudulent, manipulative market tactics" moving forward.
Google searches related to NFTs soar to record highs in 2021
As per data made available by Google Trends, searches related to the term non-fungible token (NFT) are currently hovering around their all-time-high levels, even beating out a number of other popular mainstream crypto-centric words such as DeFi, Ethereum and Blockchain.
A bulk of this interest seems to be emanating from countries like Brazil, Argentina and Columbia as well as certain Asian nations such as China, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines where NFTs have gained a massive amount of mainstream traction over the past 3-6 months.
What lies ahead for ETH?
With Ethereum dropping below its fourth-quarter upward trendline support of AUD$5,600 (US$4,100), many analysts believe that the coming few days could see the altcoin slide as low as AUD$5,000 (US$3,700) only to make a solid upward push. That said, there are also those who believe that ETH may make its way down to the AUD$4,100 (US$3,000) resistance before making any sort of tangible recovery.
Interested in cryptocurrency? Learn more about the basics with our beginner's guide to Bitcoin, dive deeper by learning about Ethereum and see what blockchain can do with our simple guide to DeFi.
Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing
