Bitcoin (BTC) continued its bearish price action over the weekend, with the leading cryptocurrency dropping to a new 3-month low of $18,390, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Bitcoin now changes hands at around $18,440, down 8% over the past 24 hours, despite a 64% jump in daily trading volume.

BTC has lost over 17% of its value over the past week, and is down over 73% from its all-time high of $68,789.63 in November 2021.

The market capitalization of Bitcoin has more than halved, plummeting from $1.27 trillion last November to under $354 billion today.  

Yesterday, Bitcoin’s network difficulty reached an all-time high of 32.045t, according to data from Blockchain.com.

Network difficulty marks the computational challenge associated with mining a block. Greater difficulty requires high computational power and significantly affects miners' profitability, driving the price of the coin lower.

Bitcoin mining difficulty measures how hard it is to mine Bitcoin. Source: Blockchain.com.

Ethereum Follows Bitcoin

Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has slipped to under $1,300, a whopping 11% decline over the past 24 hours.

Following its merge on 15th September, Ethereum has lost more than 20% of its value, with its market cap now standing at around $159 billion. ETH is down 73.30% from its all-time high of $4,891.70 recorded in November 2021, per data from CoinMarketCap.

NFT trading volumes on Ethereum dropped over 18% over the past 24 hours, according to data from Cryptoslam. On a monthly note, Ethereum-based NFT trading volumes have dropped by nearly 30%.

As per data from Defi Llama, the total value locked (TVL) across all decentralized applications on Ethereum is down 12.73% in the past 24 hours, indicating reduced user interest in DeFi. 

Long traders rattled

Amid today’s bearish price action, over $433 million from over 131,000 traders has been liquidated in the crypto market over the past 24 hours, per data from Coinglass.

Of the $433 million liquidated, over $379 million, or 87%, were long positions, indicating the market’s bearish trend.

Ethereum leads liquidations with $173 million, followed by Bitcoin with $121 million over the same period.

Green bars show blown-out longs, and red bars represent blown-out shorts. Source: Coinglass

The market’s bearish price action is likely linked to the Fed’s expected rate hike later this week.

As reported by Reuters, a 100-basis point hike is not off the table following August’s raging inflation figures, with most expecting a 50 to 75-basis point hike.

Other top cryptocurrencies, including Polkadot (down 12%), Avalanche ( down 10%), Shiba Inu (down 10%), Polygon (down 12%), and Cardano (down 10%), have also posted severe losses over the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.

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