According to Bloomberg News, cryptocurrency prices are steady even as there are no signs of easing in Ukraine, following new sanctions being imposed on Russia by Western countries. President Vladimir Putin refuses to end the attack on the neighbor.
Steady Price of Bitcoin
Bitcoin was found to be trading around $38,900 in Hong Kong at 4 PM approximately when it started on the weekend. On Saturday, for a brief period, it edged over $40,000, and Ether was down by 3.4%, recording at $2,732.
The calm nature of the crypto market was following a global equities rally that took place on Friday, which witnessed a hump of 2.2% in the S&P 500 index. The correlation of Bitcoin with that of the stocks is at a record high, and the trading indicates that there will be a steady opening on Monday for the Asian equities, excluding a sharp rise of tensions between the Western countries and Russia.
Bloomberg News reports that the western countries unleashed a wide range of sanctions against Russia, and as per a US official, it is likely that more are slated to come this weekend against the central bank. Bloomberg News reported that the military progress of Russia in Ukraine has been slower in comparison to what was anticipated.
The missile test by North Korea that was resumed was also taken into stride by the cryptocurrencies, although the government in South Korea expressed concern about the neighbor.
Bitcoin stays well above the low of January 24th that recorded $32,970. According to the strategists at JPMorgan Chase & Co, Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou has pushed the cryptocurrency well into the oversold territory.
As per Grayscale Investments, any rally in the price of crypto in the wake of bad news and events only reflects that there might be seller exhaustion due to the ongoing crisis.
The technical indicators appear to be promising as well, as per Rick Bensignor, the President of Bensignor Investment Strategies and a former Morgan Stanley strategist. Using a constructive rally, Bitcoin could be pushed to the $50,000 and $55,000 levels using a constructive rally.
The Bitcoin hash rate, which is the amount of computing power used for mining and processing the transactions on the network, seems to be being hit by the conflict. On Saturday, it was approximately 173.8 million tera hashes per second, down from 248.1 million tera hashes on February 12th, as per data obtained from Blockchain.com, reports Bloomberg News.
The Bitcoin hash rate has been declining since several miners across Russia and Ukraine have been adversely affected by the war in Ukraine. While some of the mining infrastructures lie in the conflict zone, these have been brought down shutters on, while few others have brought down shutters and shifted from those areas that have been perceived as probable conflict zones in the Ukraine war, reports Bloomberg News.
