Bitcoins Falls Back Below $50K as Crypto Markets Stumble

After a short-lived Christmas rally, Bitcoin is in decline on Tuesday morning, dipping below the $50,000 mark.

By Andrew Asmakov

There was plenty to cheer for Bitcoin investors over the holidays as the benchmark cryptocurrency soared above $50,000 last Thursday, followed by consolidation above $51,000 on Christmas eve.

Barring a brief dip below $50,000 on Sunday, Bitcoin went on to hit a three-week high of $52,050 on Monday evening.

The bullish action was cut short, however, as an attempt to settle above the resistance level failed.

In the following hours, the price of Bitcoin fell by 4% to an intraday low of $48,700. Despite a recovery to $49,101 by press time, the industry’s leading crypto is still down 3.6% over the last day, according to CoinGecko.

Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, followed a similar pattern after it failed to clear the $4,120 resistance level. It also dropped 4%, falling to $3,878.

ETH is changing hands at $3,905 at press time, a decline of 3.9% over the past 24 hours.

Crypto markets follow Bitcoin

The vast majority of other cryptocurrencies are in a downtrend as well, with Terra’s LUNA suffering the biggest losses.

LUNA has been on a tear over the past few weeks, hitting a new all-time high above $103 on Monday. As markets tumbled, the token is currently trading around $89.2, down 9.9% over the day, per CoinGecko.

Among other top ten cryptocurrencies, Polkadot is down 7.5%, followed by Cardano, Solana, and XRP, who all posted losses between 3% and 6%.

Binance Coin (BNB) is the only asset to hold its ground on the daily chart. After hitting an intraday high of $571, BNB fell to $549 and is still up 0.3% in the last 24 hours.

The combined market cap of all digital assets is currently $2.43 trillion, down 2.5% from $2.57 trillion on Monday.