The world of digital money, known as the cryptocurrency market, experienced a small decrease in value over the last day. It couldn’t keep up the strong growth it showed earlier in the week.
Bitcoin (BTC), the biggest digital coin, went down to about $90,000. Other popular digital coins, called ‘altcoins’ (short for alternative coins, meaning any crypto that isn’t Bitcoin), like Hyperliquid (HYPE), lost even more value.
Bitcoin Takes a Step Back
Bitcoin, the most important digital currency, started the week well. Its price even went above $92,000 for a short time. However, after that, sellers (sometimes called ‘bears’ in the market, because they push prices down) became stronger. Bitcoin’s price then fell below the important level of $90,000. But buyers (sometimes called ‘bulls,’ who push prices up) stepped in and stopped it from falling much further. Right now, Bitcoin is trading at about $90,200 (according to TradingView), which means it’s down about 2% today.
Something interesting happened: Bitcoin’s price dropped shortly after a company called Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) announced it bought a lot more Bitcoin. Strategy spent almost $1 billion to buy over 10,600 Bitcoins. This brings their total amount of Bitcoin to 660,624 BTC!
Usually, when a big company buys a lot of something, it makes people want to buy more, which pushes the price up (this is called ‘bullish’). But, it’s been noticed that Bitcoin’s price often goes down a little right after Strategy announces a big purchase.
Also, a meeting by the FOMC (which stands for Federal Open Market Committee, a part of America’s central bank) is happening this week. This meeting might cause more changes in the market. America’s central bank will announce its decision on interest rates (the cost of borrowing money) on December 10. Many people expect them to lower the main interest rate by a small amount (a quarter-percentage point).
Because Bitcoin’s price went down, its ‘market capitalization’ (which is the total value of all Bitcoins in existence) also dropped to about $1.8 trillion. Bitcoin’s ‘dominance’ (meaning how much of the total crypto market value it makes up compared to all other digital coins) is now about 57.05%.
Hyperliquid and Other Altcoins See Big Drops
The situation for some other popular altcoins (alternative digital coins) is not as good. Hyperliquid (HYPE) lost the most, dropping by 9% today. Quant (QNT) and Kaspa (KAS) also saw significant drops, both losing about 6% of their value.
Many other digital coins like Internet Computer (ICP), Uniswap (UNI), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Pepe (PEPE), Chainlink (LINK), and Dogecoin (DOGE) also lost value today (we say they are ‘in the red’).
But not all coins went down! MemeCore (M) and Canton (CC) were among the best performers out of the top 100 digital currencies today (December 9). MemeCore went up by 7%, and Canton by 5%. Zcash (ZEC) also saw a good increase, going up by 4%, and is now worth more than $400.
Right now, the total value of all digital currencies combined (the ‘total cryptocurrency market capitalization’) is about $3.16 trillion. This is a 2% decrease from what it was yesterday (Source: QuantifyCrypto).