The crypto market is struggling to break out of its slumber owing to the ongoing U.S. government shutdown. Bitcoin, the most expensive crypto asset, has registered a price drop of over 7.4 percent in the last seven days in the backdrop of the market slump. On Friday, November 7 Bitcoin reflected a dip of 2.11 percent to trade at $101,815. This is among BTC’s lowest price points in nearly five months.
Ether is closely following Bitcoin’s trajectory on the price charts. The second most expensive cryptocurrency clocked a loss of 3.53 percent in the last 24 hours. At the time of writing, ETH was trading at $3,331. The asset’s seven-day loss margin has expanded to 13.77 percent, data by CoinMarketCap showed.
Despite the ongoing slowdown, market analysts say that while the market sentiment presently appears to be bearish, a potential trend reversal is expected with increasing whale activity.
“CryptoQuant data shows wallets holding 1,000–10,000 BTC added 29,600 BTC last week, while Ethereum whales bought nearly 395,000 ETH worth $1.37 billion in just the last three days. Historically, when large holders increase exposure during high fear periods, price recovery often follows within weeks,” Edul Patel, the CEO of Mudrex told CoinHeadlines.
A majority of altcoins reflected losses on Friday. Tokens including XRP, Solana, Dogecoin, Stellar, Hedera, and World Liberty Financial clocked losses within the range of one percent to six percent.
A handful of tokens reflected small gains on Friday. These included Tron, Zcash, Monero, and Aptos.
The overall crypto market cap slipped by 1.79 percent over the last day. At present, the valuation of the sector stands at $3.4 trillion.
The fear and greed index score of 21 indicates at the fear sentiment among traders. The last few days also clocked massive liquidations from the market. Over $2 billion have been pulled out of the market owing to macro-economic instability.
The U.S., meanwhile, is seeing its longest ever government shutdown that has now entered the 36th day. It started after Republicans and Democrats failed to agree on a bill funding government services past 1 October after the previous federal budget expired. Several government staff members in the U.S. have missed their paychecks owing to the shutdown. As per reports, efforts to end the shutdown as soon as possible are ongoing.