In the wake of the long-awaited network “Merge,” the price of Bitcoin fell below the US$20,000 support line. The decline was witnessed during early trading in Asia on Friday, while Ether saw a sell-off. The total market value of all cryptocurrencies fell below $1 trillion for the first time.
Most Top 10 Cryptocurrencies Lost Value
A “sell the news” downturn became visible in the price of Ether on Thursday. The decline was because Ethereum’s network completed a Merge transaction at the time of the incident. According to the data provided by CoinMarketCap, the price of Ether (ETH) decreased to $1,472.
The loss equates to a decrease of 9.86%. The flop comes on the heels of a further reduction of 13.63% for the last week. ETH saw the most significant decline among the leading ten currencies. Solana, trailing ETH, also experiences a drop of 5.07%. XRP saw a decrease of 4.32%.
The value of Ethereum Classic (ETC), the coin originating from the chain from which ETH was split, saw a decline of 11.63 percent. On Thursday, the much-anticipated Ethereum “Merge” finally ended. This Merge sent the ETH price soaring to a high of US$1,648.
CEO of cryptocurrency hedge fund ARK36 Anto Paroian addressed Forkast late Thursday. Anto Paroian makes it clear that many investors will see the Merge completion as a “sell the news” event. As with the rest of the cryptocurrency markets, ETH is still very much under the influence of a dire macroeconomic outlook.
Paroian says they may see the price of Ethereum collapse over the following days or weeks.
The Chinese Yuan Fell in Value
Hostile trading activity was seen throughout the whole of Asia. This Negative trend is mirroring the overnight drop that occurred on Wall Street. At the close of trading for the day, the Shanghai Composite and the Hang Seng saw losses of 2.3% and 0.9%, respectively.
A 1.1% decrease was reported in the Nikkei 225. The value of the Chinese yuan decreased to less than seven dollars in US currency for the first time in over two years.
On Friday, China’s manufacturing production and retail sales for August came in higher than expected. Compared to the same month a year earlier, retail sales climbed by 5.4% in August. The August increase was higher than the 3.5% that was projected, while industrial output increased by 4.2%.
These increases were better than the 3.8% predicted in a Reuters survey.
August Retail Sales in The United States Increased
The United States of America released retail sales results for August on Thursday. The results were higher than expected, indicating a boost of 0.3% from July’s numbers. The decrease in new claims for unemployment insurance for the week ending on September 10th is consistent with a stable economy.
The result of these claims has the potential to give validity to the policy of aggressive interest rate hikes. The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System will announce the most recent decision about interest rates. The decision is expected during their next meeting on September 20-21.