The world’s crypto pioneer, bitcoin, saw a sharp decline of nearly $10,000 in roughly an hour to as low as $42,000 before bouncing back to $45,000, extending the latest downtrend amid the emergence of the Omicron Covid-19 strain.
The price of bitcoin has dropped around $15,000 over the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value, has declined by about 14% to some $3,942. Both cryptocurrencies have experienced turbulence since the Omicron strain emerged.
The latest drop has also been attributed to the harsh words of US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, as he told a Senate panel it was appropriate for the Fed to consider speeding up the taper of asset purchases.
The decrease in the value of the two leading digital assets reflected a broader plunge in the crypto-markets, with some cryptocurrencies dropping by 20% over the past 24 hours.
A relatively new crypto-coin, omicron, which bears the same name as the new Covid-19 variant, has seen a massive spike recently, outperforming major crypto’s bitcoin and Ethereum.
The token OMIC surged over 900% since Saturday to reach an all-time high of $689. Its market cap has soared to over $400 million. The cryptocurrency was trading at $379.61 as of 08:40 GMT on Tuesday.
CoinDesk described the rise of the obscure token as an example of “peak irrationality,” since the cryptocurrency rallied owing to its name. The B.1.1.529 Corona-virus strain (Omicron) was named after the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet by WHO.
The OMIC coin is built on Ethereum scaling technology Arbitrum. The token was created as a fork of the OlympusDAO DeFi protocol. Each OMIC DeFi token is said to be backed by a basket of assets.
The total supply of the crypto token is capped at 1 million, which means that the majority of its tokens are yet to be mined and traded.
RT. com / ABC Flash Point News 2021.
Not just BTC, almost everything dropped a big chunk. I don’t understand the correlation between what the fed said about inflation and this, is this a panic sell situation?
Anyone still believe their retirement savings are more secure in the old corrupt and vulnerable ledgers?
Nope…..
Part of the derailing and confiscation strategies?
OmiCohen beats BitCohen!
Nice comparison,
Imagine if you delete your crypto wallet then all those digital asset will gone forever, it is time to really purchase gold which is the only thing the world needs if the USD suddenly collapse! Crypto does not exist, it is just like software or computer game which you have downloaded online which can get easily deleted!
The only way out for a few lucky ones?
Apparently, Greek alphabets are getting very fashionable. They appear in a number of places and events. Comes Omega, would it spell an end to everything..?
Hebrew definitions as well?