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