Altcoins nurse double-digit losses as Bitcoin bulls fight to retake $49K

Another wave of selling pressure hit the cryptocurrency marketplace on Feb. 23 as Bitcoin struggles to reclaim the $49,000 level.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that Bitcoin barbarous under intense pressure in the early on trading hours on Tuesday and this pushed the price of BTC as low as $44,927 before buyers arrived to stop the descent.

The bulk of altcoins and DeFi tokens are now even deeper into their double-digit losses and Bitcoin (BTC) price has dropped by more than than $10,000 in the past 48 hours.

*BTC/USDT iv-hour chart. Source:* *TradingView*

At the time of writing, BTC is trading at a price of $48,600, which reflects a 11% decrease for the day, just according to Cointelegraph analyst Marcel Pechman, pro traders accept looked to buy the dip and opened new leveraged long positions.

Today'southward market downturn has overshadowed several positive developments for the cryptocurrency ecosystem, including the news that Bitfinex and Tether have settled their case with the Office of the New York Attorney General and agreed to pay $18.five million for amercement to the state of New York. Both parties too agreed to submit to periodic reporting of their reserves.

Interest in the offset Bitcoin substitution-traded fund in Northward America has also continued to explode equally the Purpose Bitcoin ETF has grown to $564 meg in assets under direction just five days after the fund was launched. Filings also show 2,251 BTC being added to the fund on Feb.23.

Pullbacks are a sign of a good for you market

Despite the marketwide carnage, many crypto traders and professional investors view the electric current pullback as a necessary interruption that allows overbought assets to retest central underlying back up levels.

As pointed out by Twitter user Bitcoin Archive, corrections like these are par for the class and were commonplace during the 2017 balderdash market, which had "9 dips betwixt 20–40%." Despite these reoccurring deep corrections, the market still increased by "20x the previous ATH" over the course of 2017.

*Significant BTC price pullbacks during the 2017 bull run. Source:* *Twitter*

Summing upwards how that relates today and where BTC is headed, Bitcoin Archive stated:

"We are now sitting on 2.35x the previous cycle ATH OF 20k. Nosotros ARE JUST GETTING STARTED."

Traditional markets rebound

Traditional markets also faced early selling force per unit area on Tuesday morning, but they were able to climb back into the green presently afterwards Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell reaffirmed that the Fed will maintain the electric current accommodative policies, including keeping benchmark rates near nothing and asset purchases at the electric current footstep of $120 billion per month.

By the closing bell, the Southward&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Boilerplate were upwardly 0.13% and 0.50%, respectively, while the Nasdaq closed downwards 0.fifty%.

Altcoins take a beating, with recent loftier flyers striking the hardest

Bitcoin's $13,000 drop over the past 48 hours has taken a heavy price on the altcoin market place, and many of the contempo high-flying decentralized finance tokens took the burden of the damage.

*Daily cryptocurrency market place performance. Source:* *Coin360*

Crypto.com Coin (CRO) saw a 33% pullback, and Binance Smart Chain'due south Venus (XVS) DeFi protocol saw its cost drop 24% to merchandise at $58.63.

A select few projects were able to buck the trend and postal service positive gains on February. 23, as new announcements about blockchain interoperability-related projects provided a well-needed elevator to tokens focused on layer-2 and cantankerous-chain transactions.

Solana (SOL) rose 11.23% to trade at $fourteen.94 after the release of its new automated market maker protocol Raydium. Fantom'south (FTM) price besides rallied past 24% after the team announced a collaboration with Yearn.finance and the rollout of a cross-chain bridge to the Ethereum network.