Crypto Market Selloff: Here’s Why Bitcoin, Ethereum Price Are Falling Sharply

A broader selloff across the crypto market started at 07:00 UTC on Wednesday, with over $160 million worth of crypto assets liquidated in an hour and $250 million liquidated in the past 24 hours.

Bitcoin price fell 5% to $29,000, with the price currently trading at $29,281. In the last 24 hours, BTC price recorded a low and high of $29,012 and $30,470, respectively.

Ethereum prices also plummeted sharply below the $2,000 level. The ETH price fell over 6% in the last 24 hours, with the price currently trading at $1,988. The 24-hour low and high are $1,980 and $2,121, respectively.

Other altcoins including BNB, XRP, Cardano, Dogecoin, Polygon (MATIC), and Solana tumbled nearly 5%, with the global crypto market falling 3% to $1.23 trillion in the last 24 hours.

Data from Coinglass revealed massive longs liquidation of over $175 million today, April 19. Almost 75k traders were liquidated in the last 24 hours, with the largest single liquidation order on Binance’s BTCUSDT pair worth $3.02 million.

Bank Of England and European Central Bank Push Fresh Inflation Fears

The global stock markets fell after the Bank of England and the European Central Bank considered increasing interest rates further to bring inflation under target rates. Traders take a cautious approach as the US Fed’s officials James Bullard and Raphael Bostic favor a higher terminal rate of between 5.50% to 5.75% and another 25 bps rate hike in May.

UK consumer price index (CPI) annual inflation came at 10.1% against the expected 9.8%. Whereas, core Eurozome inflation inches higher while the annual inflation rate falls to 6.9% in March.

The U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) effectively jumped higher to 102, causing Bitcoin price and Ethereum prices to fall sharply in response.