#Bitcoine slides below $100,000, Federal Reserve's Powell rejects bitcoin reserve.
On Friday, the price of bitcoin plunged to almost $92,000 before rebounding to more than $97,000, despite reaching a new all-time price high of more than $108,000 on Tuesday.
Part of the sell-off was catalyzed by Wednesday’s news that the Federal Reserve would not hold bitcoin in its reserve, prompting the world’s largest cryptocurrency to dip by 7%. We’re not allowed to own bitcoin,” Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said. “The Federal Reserve Act says what we can own, and we’re not looking for a law change. That’s the kind of thing for Congress to consider, but we are not looking for a law change at the Fed."
Overall, the global crypto market cap dipped by 1.2%, reaching $3.52 trillion, according to CoinGecko.
Ethereum, the world’s second-largest digital asset, also dropped by 10%, though it recovered Friday morning by reaching a price near $3,467. Meanwhile, Solana, the world’s sixth-most valuable cryptocurrency, with a market cap of $92 billion, is currently trading at $192 at the time of writing, after dropping 10%.
On Thursday, bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which debuted this January, saw their first outflows in weeks, with $BTC $ETH seeing $650 million in outflows. Meanwhile, #Ethereum ETFs saw outflows exceeding $60 million.
With the upcoming holiday season on the horizon, some market analysts underlined that "mixed behavior" over Christmas and New Year was to be expected: "The first rule of bitcoin is that it is always volatile in the same way water is always wet," said James Toledano, Chief Operating Officer at Unity Wallet. "It’s behavior is always mixed and there is zero discernible pattern at the end of the year going into the next. Sometimes the price rises in the new year and at other times it falls. So, historically, we can say that bitcoin exhibits typically mixed behavior over Christmas and New Year."
