On the 31st of January, ahead of the Federal Reserve’s announcement, where the central bank is expected to hike interest rates, the price of the leading cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum, decreased. It’s not only the leading cryptocurrencies that followed a declining trend, as other cryptocurrencies of the market also followed the same trend. With the indication of more fed rate hikes by the central bank, traders got de-risked and moved toward safe assets like the dollar.
According to data from CoinGecko, the price of Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency in the market, decreased by more than 4% over the past 24 hours. BTC is currently, as of this writing, trading at around $22,787. On the other hand, Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency in the market, dropped by more than 6% over the same period. And ETH is currently trading at around $1,551.
Among all other cryptocurrencies and tokens, the one which hit very hard is Solana, which decreased by more than 10% over the past 24 hours. According to data from CoinGecko, Solana is currently, as of this writing, trading at around $23. Since the start of the last year, the crypto market has been following the US equities. And it’s not only the cryptocurrencies that decreased after this indication of more fed rate hikes, as stocks have also been hit hard. Over the past day, the price of the S&P500 dropped by more than 1.1% or 45 points. And the tech-heavy Nasdaq decreased by more than 1.7% or 198 points over the same period.
The reason behind this huge decrease over the past 24 hours is that traders are shifting risky assets because the Federal Reserve could continue its aggressive monetary policy to get inflation under control in the US. For this purpose, the Federal Reserve already increased interest rates seven times last year.