Bitcoin Dips Briefly Below $21,000 as Investors Continue to Withdraw from Risk Assets

Bitcoin briefly dipped below $21,000 during the trading session in Asia on Tuesday before rebounding to trade above $22,000 as investors continued to withdraw from risk assets amid upcoming rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve that should be higher than previously anticipated.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency fell as much as 10.30% to $20,817 compared to its previous closing prices in New York at $23,205. Meanwhile, ethereum fell as much as 13% during the same period.

 

The selloff on Tuesday was a sequent from a plummet on Monday as major trading platforms such as Celsius and Binance paused their withdrawals.

In a statement from Binance to clarify a pause in early Monday, the company said that it is repairing several minor hardware failures on wallet consolidation nodes earlier today, which caused the earlier transactions that were pending to be broadcast to the network after the nodes were repaired.

“These pending consolidation transactions had a low gas fee, which resulted in the later withdrawal transactions – which were pointing to the pending consolidation UTXO – getting stuck and not able to be processed successfully,” wrote Binance.

 

Meanwhile, Celsius said on Sunday that it would pause withdrawals due to extreme market conditions, adding that the move was meant to stabilize liquidity and operations.

 

Bitcoin price had fallen 28% this month and 51% this year.