Bitcoin has plummeted to two-month lows of US$18,800 while Ethereum, which looked to be on a roll, encountered a stiff resistance that brought its exchange price cruising down to US$1,500.
Time will decide if the price drop is a blip or the start of a ‘Septembear’ downtrend but for now, global market capitalisation is trending below US$940bn.
The plunge is likely due to a strong US dollar that surged on confirmation of Federal Reserve rate hikes and ongoing safe-haven demand for the greenback at the expense of equities and non-US currencies.
Network tokens unsurprisingly felt the pinch, with Cardano, Solana, Polkadot, Polygon and the smaller cap all shedding mid-to-high single digits.
After soaring in the past few days, Ethereum Classic – a legacy alternative to Ethereum – dropped 16% to bring its market cap down to US$4.65bn.
The decentralised finance (DeFi) market also took a beating, with Curve, Compound Finance, Uniswap and Aave losing over 10% of their respective market caps.
Total value locked across the whole DeFi space fell close to 5%.
Investors now look to see if the markets can offer up a correction; in some positive news, the one-hour candlestick charts are turning green at the time of writing.