Crypto market continues to fall as tension escalates in Israel-Hamas conflict

Crypto market overview: Bitcoin traded sideways for another day before we saw a decline in BTC, in the past 24 hours. The volumes on every major crypto exchange have also been on the decline, with no major movement ever since the big move in March 2023. 

While talking to Republic, Shubham Hudda, Senior Manager, CoinSwitch Markets Desk, said, “The bearish sentiment around Bitcoin remains negative largely due to the ongoing macroeconomic conditions. With a declared war in Israel after the Russia - Ukraine conflict furthers the bearish trend. ETH/BTC pair which the market usually deems to be the leading altcoin indicator, also continues to make new lows as it reaches its 11-month low.”

CoinDCX Research team also shared their view on the recent crypto market volatility. CoinDCX said, “Both BTC and ETH have experienced a decline of over 1.5 per cent in the past 24 hours, while Bitcoin's dominance in the market continues to rise. This dip may be due to ongoing geopolitical uncertainty, the Ethereum Foundation's sale of 1,700 ETH, and heightened government oversight, such as the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) issuing 146 alerts within the first 24 hours of a new crypto marketing regime.”

On the other hand, Rajagopal Menon, VP, WazirX, also shared his insights into the market. Menon said, “The overall market sentiment has declined with major moving averages indicating a ‘sell’ sentiment. However, following the recent trend of positive price action over the last couple of days, it is anticipated that the market will recover. Bitcoin’s dominance has reached a three-month high which could indicate a shift in sentiment from altcoins towards the largest token by market capitalisation.

Edul Patel, Co-Founder, Mudrex talked to us about the recent Bitcoin proposal. He said, “A Bitcoin developer has introduced a proposal to introduce off-chain smart contracts to the Bitcoin ecosystem. This concept is present in the October 9 white paper titled ‘BitVM: Compute Anything on Bitcoin,’ authored by Robin Linus, the project lead at ZeroSync. BitVM has the potential to enable Bitcoin to support smart contracts similar to Ethereum, all without making any modifications to Bitcoin's underlying consensus rules.”

Crypto market in last 24 hours

As the global geopolitical situation escalates, the crypto market remains highly volatile, with leading cryptocurrencies registering steep falls in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin and Ethereum have continued their decline while other cryptocurrencies including MATIC, Bitcoin Cash, Polkadot, Cardano, XRP, Filecoin, and others were some of the most affected cryptocurrencies yesterday. 

Bitcoin is currently trading just above the $27,000 mark while losing 1.17 per cent in the last 24 hours and Ethereum has continued its decline, losing another 1.48 per cent. ETH is currently trading at $1,561. 

Contrary to the larger crypto movement, Solana gained 0.8 per cent yesterday and is trading at $22.30 while its weekly returns continue to be -3.5 per cent. Dogecoin also registered a minor gain of 0.16 per cent and trading at $0.059.