Last edited: Jan 6, 2022

It seems like 2022 did not bring about bullish sentiments in the market. Instead, most coins, including the most prominent ones of BTC and ETH, are all down at least 6% over the past 24 hours. Let us take a look at the market performances of various cryptocurrencies on Wednesday.

BTC: $43,270.67 (-6.62% over the past 24 hours)

BTC, since reaching $50,000 near the end of December, has been on a freefall since, dropping more than 15% in value to just above $43,000. As the signpost of cryptocurrencies, BTC’s price fluctuations often directly affect the fluctuations of other coins, and as evident by today, other coins also struggled due to BTC. This is partly due to the news from the Federal Reserve, who states that they expect as many as three federal funds rate hikes in 2022 to fight inflation, which leads to a decrease in Bitcoin’s value as a hedge against inflation.

ETH: $3,507.41 (-8.03% over the past 24 hours)

ETH, the second largest cryptocurrency behind BTC, also crumbled today, and on a bigger extent as well, losing more than 8% of its near $450 billion market cap in just 24 hours. The silver lining for ETH is that it is primed to takeover BTC as the biggest cryptocurrency in the market; however, its market cap is still only 50% to that of BTC, so 2022 would require another explosive growth from ETH, which could occur given ETH’s plans to integrate its experimental layer 2 solutions to improve ETH’s gas fees, transaction efficiency, and scaling.

DOT: $26.05 (-11.54% over the past 24 hours)

Of the top 10 coins in terms of market cap, DOT suffered the biggest slide on Wednesday, dropping 11.54% in a single day. Although several investors are still incredibly optimistic about the role DOT will play in the future of blockchain adoption and interoperability of multiple dominant chains, for the short-term, holders of DOT can’t be too happy about its price development so far in 2022.

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