cryptocurrency
Bitcoin stabilizes after falling
A counterfeit coin with the Bitcoin logo. Photo: Nicolas Armer/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
On Saturday, it fell to a six-month low at a good $34,000. At the start of the week, the pioneer among cryptocurrencies stabilized.
The situation on the cryptocurrency market stabilized at the start of the week after a downward slide over the weekend. As of mid-morning, a bitcoin cost just over $35,000.
In the days before, the oldest and largest digital currency by market value had come under severe pressure. On Saturday, it fell to a six-month low at a good $34,000. On Thursday it had cost almost $10,000 more.
Other crypto assets such as the market’s number two, Ether, also stabilized at the start of the week. At the start of the week, the around 17,000 existing digital currencies were worth a good 1.6 trillion dollars. Before the recent descent it was more than two trillion dollars.
Crypto assets have recently been weighed down by the expectation that the Federal Reserve will soon be able to fight high inflation with interest rate hikes. Rising interest rates are poison, especially for particularly risky investments such as digital currencies, because they tend to increase the attractiveness of safe and interest-bearing investments such as government bonds.
Another burden for Bitcoin and Co. is the critical attitude of the Russian central bank: The central bank recommends that the legislator completely ban the use of digital currencies. The production of crypto values would also be affected, which is carried out by complicated calculations on mostly energy-intensive computer systems. Russia is considered one of the strongholds of so-called crypto prospecting or mining. The process has fallen into disrepute due to its high energy consumption.