Bitcoin Slips Below $20,000 After Fed Chair’s Comments in Jackson Hole

Bitcoin (BTC) continued its bearish action on Friday night and slipped below the key $20,000 mark to $19,907, according to CoinMarketCap. It’s a monthly low for August and the first time Bitcoin went below $20k since July 14.

The top cryptocurrency has been in free fall since Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s remarks in Jackson Hole about raising interest rates further to control raging inflation.

The market capitalization of Bitcoin has tumbled from $1.27 trillion in November 2021 to under $383 billion today. Bitcoin is now down 6.4% in the past week.

Ethereum (ETH), the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has fared even worse in the past 24 hours, down 10% to $1,468 at the time of writing.

With its market capitalization under $180 billion, ETH is lost nearly 69% of its value from its all-time high of $4891.70, recorded in November 2021, suggests data from CoinMarketCap.

Amid the bearish price action, over $250 million from 87,144 traders have been liquidated in the crypto market over the past 24 hours, according to data from Coinglass.

Ethereum leads liquidations with $108.60 million, followed by Bitcoin with $65 million over the same period. Most liquidations for the two leading cryptocurrencies came from blown-out long positions.

Other cryptocurrencies, including Binance Coin (BSC, down 2.91%), Solana (SOL, down 6.34%), and Avalanche (AVAX, down 8.06%), have also posted bad losses over the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.

Bitcoin and Ethereum react to Fed Chair’s remarks

The market’s bearish action is linked to Fed Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s latest remarks at the Fed’s annual economic conference.

Following his remarks, both stock and crypto markets reacted brutally; the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 each closed down more than 3% on Friday. A 75-basis point hike is expected when the Fed meets next month, according to Insider.

Digital asset fund volumes were also on the slower side last week, as per the Coinshares report.

As per data from DefiLlama, the total value locked (TVL) across all blockchains is down over 5.45% in the past 24 hours, indicating reduced user interest in DeFi.

Popular DeFi platforms like Lido, DAI’s creator MakerDAO, Curve, Uniswap and Compound have seen all their TVL slip by double digits over the past month.

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