The Bitcoin rally, which began in November 2024 following Donald Trump’s election as the US President, has significantly lost momentum in recent days. On Friday, February 28, Bitcoin saw a nearly six percent decline on international exchanges, dropping to $80,020 (roughly Rs. 69.9 lakh) for the first time since November 2024. Indian exchanges reflected a five percent dip over the past 24 hours, with Bitcoin trading at $85,135 (roughly Rs. 74.4 lakh).
Explaining the slowdown, the CoinDCX research team told Gadgets 360 that, “the tariff war escalated after President Trump announced an additional 10 percent tariff on China, which is believed to have adversely impacted the crypto markets. Additionally, the SEC stated that most of the memecoins do not qualify as securities, as the Howey Test keeps them out of the security rules mainly since they thrive on hype, not utility.”
Ether trailed behind Bitcoin on the price charts on Friday and saw a price dip of over nine percent over the last day. On global exchanges, Ether is trading at $2,114 (roughly Rs. 1.84 lakh), as shown by CoinMarketCap. As per Indian exchanges, ETH is priced $2,130 (roughly Rs. 1.86 lakh) after seeing a dip of 8.70 percent.
“Ethereum has suffered, dropping to a yearlong low. The market sentiment has been shaken by Trump’s tariff policies, regulatory concerns, and the recent $1.5 billion Bybit hack, eroding investor confidence,” said Avinash Shekhar, Co-Founder and CEO, Pi42. “Traders are eyeing key technical levels and economic factors that could dictate Bitcoin’s next move. As risk-off sentiment mounts, crypto investors should remain cautious about what lies ahead.”
The crypto price tracker by Gadgets 360 showed majority altcoins trading in losses on Friday.
These include Ripple, Solana, and Cardano alongside Avalanche, Chainlink, Shiba Inu, Dogecoin, Stellar, and [Polkadot] (https://www.gadgets360.com/finance/polkadot-price-in-india-today-inr).
Shiba Inu, Uniswap, Litecoin, and Stellar also tumbled in prices.
The overall crypto market valuation fell by 5.40 percent to $2.66 trillion (roughly Rs. 2,32,48,293 crore) in the last 24 hours, showed CoinMarketCap.
Leo, Iota, and Circuits of Value managed to retain miniscule profits.
“Even as the SEC has been softening its stance against crypto lately, with yesterday’s comments coming out being memecoins not being securities- there is no respite to be found in the market. For BTC, next support line is around $73,000 (roughly Rs. 63.8 lakh) mark and if global macro doesn’t change, this can happen much sooner than people are expecting,” the CoinSwitch markets desk told Gadgets 360, urging investors to tread cautiously.
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