Madrid. The bitcointhe best-known cryptocurrency in the market, extends the falls this Monday and in the middle of the session it plummets almost 14% to its lowest since December 2020.
According to data from Bloomberg consulted by Efe, bitcoin, which began the session with losses of more than 7%, has been accentuating the fall throughout the morning. At 1:30 p.m. it plummets 13.61% to $23,623.23.
According to the publication Financial Times, Bitcoin has been affected by the decision of the cryptocurrency platform Celsius Network to stop the withdrawal of funds from its clients and prohibit transfers between accounts.
Celsius Network is one of the largest crypto lending platforms in the world, managing about 12.00 millions of dollars in customer assets (about 11,000 million euros). Since last Friday, bitcoin has fallen by around 21%.
Likewise, the value of this cryptocurrency is reduced by 49% in the year and by 65.76% from the historical maximums that it reached last November, when it touched 69,000 dollars.
Experts explain that in recent weeks the cryptocurrencies they are being affected by the increases in interest rates undertaken by the different central banks, which have tightened their monetary policies to control inflation.
Read more: They used the “bitcoin” to move illicit money from the US
The IG Analyst Sergio Avila ensures that inflation in the US, which as it was known on Friday rose to 8.6% in May, higher than expected, “makes the market discount more aggressive increases in interest rates of central banks and puts pressure on the US Federal Reserve (Fed) to further increase its rates.
“Interest rate hikes negatively affect technology, all sectors that have to do with growth and, of course, cryptocurrencies, which are conditioned in the same way,” Ávila points out.
Since the last increase in interest rates announced by the Fed, on May 4, bitcoin has lost 40.64% of its value.
Since mid-May, bitcoin has remained stable at $30,000, and that after days before it plummeted to the lowest since December 2020 (around $25,000) after the sharp drop in terraUSD, a “stablecoin” that maintained its parity with the dollar through a complex algorithm linked to luna, an unbacked cryptocurrency.
Ether, the second best-known cryptocurrency in the market, also plummeted this Monday, 19.08%, to $1,194.243.
