It seems cryptocurrency markets are going through their worst lean period, and it doesn’t seem to be coming to an end anytime soon.
Bitcoin, the largest crypto in terms of market size, spent much of the week stuck in a tight trading zone.
The bulls came out briefly but couldn’t work together to undo the damage caused by the events of the last few weeks, most noticeably, the collapse of the Terra blockchain and its coins.
For what it’s worth though, Bitcoin did manage to stay around the $30,000 mark for much of the week. However, that seems to have been broken now. Its current level in the $29K range suggests the crypto is going to extend its losing streak to a record-setting eighth consecutive week.
And as it fell, it took the markets with it. Ethereum has just broken the $2000 level and dropped down to $1943 before rebounding to 1970, a fall of about 3% in the last 24 hours. Similarly, BNB has broken below the $300 mark, dropping over 2% in the last 24 hours, before rising near that level again.
In the same vein, after reaching highs of $58 during the week, Solana is currently hovering around $48, a fall of almost 6% in the last 24 hours. In fact, discounting stablecoins, all of the top 10 largest cryptos in terms of market size are trading in the red.
Things don’t look set to improve in the near term since there’s virtually no good news coming from other parts of the decentralized finance (DeFi) economy as well.
Non-fungible token (NFT) sales got off to a stellar start this year, having already clocked $37 billion worth of sales as of May 1, 2022, putting them tantalizingly close to the total NFT sales figure of $40 billion in 2021.
However, the demand for NFTs is tapering off, and while NFTs will still see more sales in 2022 than last year, the difference wouldn’t be as stark as some were expecting at the start of the year.
At press time, the Crypto fear & greed index has comfortably settled in the “Extreme Fear” zone with a rating of 13. However, after accounting for the bear run of the last 24 hours, it’ll most definitely slip down a couple of notches when it updates next in a couple of hours.
