Cryptocurrencies saw a sharp decline on Thursday, with Bitcoin (BTC) dropping below $25,000 and XRP and Cardano’s ADA (ADA) extending 24-hour losses to as much as 7.4%. According to CoinGecko data, total market capitalization lost 3.8% in the past 24 hours. Some traders have suggested that Bitcoin could drop to as low as $23,500, based on price-chart analysis. “Bitcoin has retreated to local resistance levels from August last year to February this year,” said Alex Kuptsikevich, a senior market analyst at trading firm FxPro. “The bulls may try to hold the sell-off near this level, but the current decline is still within the descending channel that has been in place since April.” Kuptsikevich added that more significant support for Bitcoin is near the 200-day average, which is currently at $23.6K and pointing higher.
ADA’s drop of more than 20% in the past week was likely due to its being named as a security in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit against crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase. XRP erased all gains from a surge earlier this week as markets digested the “Hinman emails” from a Ripple Labs filing on Tuesday. Ether (ETH) posted a 6.4% 24-hour drop, while Ether-tracked futures had the highest liquidations among majors at $57 million out of a total of $143 million across all crypto-tracked futures.
Market sentiment was further spooked by general bearish sentiment and an abnormal amount of Tether (USDT) stablecoin sales on the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Curve Finance. USDT balances on Curve’s popular 3pool, a stablecoin swapping pool made up of USDT, USDC and DAI, rose to over 72% early on Thursday, suggesting traders had exchanged tens of millions of USDT in favor of USD Coin (USDC) and Dai (DAI).