Bitcoin Slides To 3-Week Low After ‘Crypto Coachella’ Fails To Impress Investors

Last week’s Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, where 25,000 people gathered to hear the latest developer pitches and glorify Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention, left attendees feeling extra bullish about the future of the original cryptocurrency.

However, that feeling did not immediately carry over to the broader investment community.

On Monday, bitcoin slipped below $41,000 for the first time in about three weeks, dropping 5.14% within 24 hours. As of 1:12 p.m. ET, the asset is changing hands at $40,838. Other cryptocurrencies have fallen further, with ether retracting by nearly 9% over the past 24 hours and solana and cardano losing over 10% each.

This downward shift was not what certain analysts were expecting over the last few days. In fact, some were anticipating a 2022 version of the so-called ‘Consensus Effect’ when prices of digital currencies rallied by as much as 25% in the days leading up to another annual crypto conference, Consensus, in previous years. However, absent any major announcements tokens continued to slide as the bearish macro headwinds prevailed.

A key reason for this negative sentiment was recent news coming out of the Federal Reserve. Minutes from its meeting in March, released last Wednesday, spurred a new wave of market turmoil as officials agreed that they would begin reducing the central bank balance sheet by $95 billion a month, likely beginning in May. Officials also seemed to be setting the table for 50bps…

Read more at www.forbes.com