Bitcoin drops below $34,000 over the weekend, extending Friday’s losses

Bitcoin continued to slide after a broader stock sell-off in the U.S. last week sent the cryptocurrency market into a frenzy and prompted bitcoin to plummet by roughly 10%. Bitcoin, the world’s largest digital currency by market value, was lower by about 3% at $33,438.03 late Sunday, according to data from Coin Metrics. This year, Bitcoin has been trading in a narrow range as it attempts to reclaim its highs of late 2021. The cryptocurrency is now down 50% from its peak price of $67,802.30 in November 2021. The drop comes after the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 1,000 points on Thursday and the Nasdaq plunged by 5%. Those losses marked the worst single-day drops since 2020. The Dow and Nasdaq fell again on Friday. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point as it responds to inflation pressures. The stock market rallied after Fed chair Jerome Powell said a larger rate hike of 75 basis points isn’t being considered. But by Thursday, investors had erased the Fed rally’s gains. The global cryptocurrency market cap was at $1.68 trillion on Sunday, according to data from CoinGecko.com, and cryptocurrency trading volume in the last day was at $119 billion.