Bitcoin Value Drops as Traders Take Profits and Consider Federal Reserve’s Rate Cuts

Major cryptocurrencies caught off guard as global crypto market cap falls 4.12%.

Bitcoin fell to its lowest level since the 10th of April, fuelled by a cascade of long liquidations as traders took profits on the possibility that the Federal Reserve's interest rate cuts may be further away than expected.

Over the past 24 hours, BTC has fallen by approximately 3.49% and is now trading at $29,272.52 as the price plummeted in less than 15 minutes, driven by a long squeeze. Yesterday, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation briefly dipped to nearly $29,000, but quickly recovered as investors bought the dip and pushed the price back above $30,000.

All major cryptocurrencies were caught off guard by this latest move and all the other altcoins – with few exceptions – are trading in the red with the global crypto market cap now at $1.23T, down 4.12% over the last day.

At the time of writing, the total amount of cryptocurrency long liquidation on platforms tracked by data resource Coinglass on 19 April was around $175 million.

Ether's value has also fallen by 5.26% to $1,983.15. This decline follows a 12% rally in the value of Ether last week following the Shanghai upgrade, which saw it rise above $2,000 for the first time since August and helped push Bitcoin's value up by 8%, past the $30,000 mark.