Bitcoin
Bitcoin trades below $65K after Wednesday’s plunge
Bitcoin (BTC) struggled to stay above $65,000, after falling below $64,000 during Wednesday’s US trading session. After briefly reclaiming $65,000, BTC has drifted toward the $64,500 mark, down about 1% from 24 hours ago. The CoinDesk 20 Index is about 2.4% lower. Wednesday’s rally halt followed a stock market selloff, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq index down 2.7% and the S&P 500 down 1.3%. Joel Kruger, market strategist at LMAX Group, said the crypto rally could stall if the stock market selloff turns into a correction, but over a longer time frame it could provide a haven for investors fleeing equities.
The chances of President Joe Biden’s dropout rate in November election reaches 68% on the cryptocurrency-based market prediction platform Polymarket. Biden announced he had been diagnosed with Covid-19 on Wednesday, having previously said he would reassess whether to run “if [he] The president has so far performed poorly on the campaign trail, particularly during a debate with Donald Trump, who is considered the significantly more pro-crypto candidate. Trump’s perceived chances of winning have become a metric for the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin’s surge to over $65,000 this week followed the assassination attempt on Trump, which was seen as a boost to his prospects of retaking the White House.
Multiple cryptocurrencies suffered significant losses after a malicious attack on Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX. The platform’s native token WRX traded 15% lower at just over 14 cents, while meme coin shiba inu (SHIB) fell nearly 10%. The WazirX hacker walked away with more than $230 million in customer funds, including $100 million in SHIB and $52 million in ETH. Other tokens have been relatively stable in dollar terms, while suffering significant losses in pairs denominated in Indian rupees. The bitcoin-rupee pair fell 11% to 5.1 million rupees ($60,945), a massive discount to rival exchange CoinDCX. Meanwhile, the USDT-INR pair on WazirX fell 8%.