At 12.02 pm IST, Bitcoin was down 3.3% at $57,629, while Ethereum dropped by 1.5% to $2,920.
Fed Chair late on Wednesday said a rate hike was unlikely, but reiterated that a rate cut would be considered only if inflation in the economy eased further.
Edul Patel, CEO of Mudrex, said, "Bitcoin trades at $57,000 mark in the past 24 hours following the US Federal Reserve's decision to maintain its benchmark interest rate between 5.25% and 5.50%. Since late February, Bitcoin has experienced a downward trend, largely influenced by macroeconomic conditions and geopolitical uncertainties. The next support level lies at the $56,600 level and the resistance is at $58,800 level.
Meanwhile, Vikram Subburaj, CEO of Giottus Crypto Platform, said, "Bitcoin registered a significant decline, dropping 4% today in response to macro and ecosystem developments. The move comes as Binance founder CZ received a 4-month prison sentence in the US, while the launch of spot ETFs in Hong Kong failed to excite investors."
The global cryptocurrency market cap declined by 2.4% to around $2.16 trillion in the last 24 hours.
Other major crypto tokens such as BNB (-3.2%), Dogecoin (-3%), Toncoin (-4%), Shiba Inu (-0.2%), NEAR Protocol (-2.2%), and Uniswap (-0.5%) also fell. On the other hand, Solana, XRP, Cardano, and Polkadot surged up to 5%.
The volume of all stablecoins is now $98.61 billion, which is 92.67% of the total crypto market 24-hour volume, as per data available on CoinMarketCap.
In the last 24 hours, the market cap of Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency, fell to $1.132 trillion. Bitcoin's dominance is currently 52.53%, according to CoinMarketCap. BTC volume in the last 24 hours rose 29.5% to $49.6 billion.
"Technically, BTC is now more than 20% down from its all-time high. It's currently testing support at $57,000, and a drop below that could lead to a further decline to the $52,000-$53,000 range, with no significant support in between. Similarly, ETH needs to hold above $2,900; otherwise, it may drop to the $2,700 level," said CoinDCX Research Team.
Despite the downturn, the ETH/BTC pair remains strong, indicating relative strength in some altcoins, with a few even showing gains amidst BTC's decline, although most are in the red, CoinDCX said.
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Source: Forex-Markets-Economic Times