cryptocurrency: Top cryptocurrency prices today: Bitcoin, Dogecoin, SHIB & Terra tank up to 10%

New Delhi: The cryptocurrency market was back in the red on Monday, thanks to profit-booking following weekend gains. Trading volumes sank significantly on account of the holiday week in Asian markets.

Bitcoin, along with other tokens, moved little over the weekend with light trading volume, as the majority of the markets in Asia headed to the weeklong Lunar New Year holiday.

All of the top-10 digital tokens were trading lower during the trade on Monday. Terra dropped more than 10 per cent while XRP and Solana shed 5 per cent each.

The global crypto market cap dropped about 3 per cent to $1.67 trillion. Meanwhile, the total crypto market volume tanked more than 4 per cent to $56.22 billion.

What’s Cooking in India?
Legal experts are divided over regulating crypto assets. While one section is advising the government not to take a hasty decision without understanding the use cases, the other is against continuing the status quo despite the difficulty in defining crypto.

ICICI Bank’s group general counsel Pramod Rao has said, “The government’s pause on introducing the crypto bill is a good thing for us to wait and watch, and decide whether we need a separate regulator, which can transcend into all use cases.”

Expert Take
Some interesting updates are coming in from the metaverse space. One of the biggest music companies in the world, Warner Music Group (WMG) has decided to enter the space via ‘the sandbox’ project, said WazirX Trade Desk.

“There are plans about creating a music-based world – another example of the entertainment industry jumping into the metaverse space. It is likely that WMG will take advantage of the blossoming trend of digital concerts,” it added.

Global Updates

• Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin will receive back $100 million in USDC from the more than $1 billion in Shiba Inu he previously donated to the India-focused COVID-19 relief fund, CryptoRelief, the fund’s founder Sandeep Nailwal and Buterin tweeted.

• In other news, a controversial proposed rule that would enforce know-your-customer rules on non hosted or self-hosted crypto wallets may again be under consideration by the US federal government.

• Google Cloud is hiring a team of blockchain experts to capitalize on the move to decentralized Web 3 applications, the company wrote in a blog post.

• Shares of digital-asset marketplace Bakkt Holdings Inc. have dropped to all-time lows, wiping out about $10 billion in market value since reaching a record high following the firm’s much-touted public market debut in October.

Streamlining NFTs
A week ago, it was Eminem who bought a bored Ape NFT, and this week it is Justin Bieber, another huge personality in the entertainment industry. Justin Bieber spent 500 Ethereum or about $1.3 million on Bored Ape #3001 and his Opensea account seems to have more than 600 NFTs, WazirX added.

Tech View from Proassetz Exchange
Ethereum, since making the top of $4,800 in November, has slipped into a protracted downtrend, which is evident from the series of lower tops on daily charts. The previous week, it has also broken a multiple support zone of $2,700 and dipped further lower.

As of now, it continues to trade below the important moving averages of 50 – & 100 – day denominations and the momentum oscillators like ROC(50) or ROC(100) are also trading in bearish territories. In the current scenario, there are resistances at $2,840, $3,090 & $3,430 which can be used to trade Ether from the short side.

(Views and recommendations given in this section are the analysts’ own and do not represent those of ETMarkets.com. Please consult your financial adviser before taking any position in the asset/s mentioned.)