This week, the cryptocurrency sector has corrected downwards, and currently, BTC is trading at 67000.00 (–5.7%), ETH is at 3280.00 (–9.6%), USDT is around 1.0001 ( 0.02%), BNB – near 570.0 (–6.0%), and SOL – around 175.00 ( 12.5%). By the end of the week, the total market capitalization decreased to 2.50T dollars, and the share of BTC on it increased to 52.7%.

The negative dynamics did not have clear fundamental reasons, so most experts are inclined to believe that it was due to partial profit-taking by ordinary traders and reduced activity of institutional investors associated with the Easter holidays. On Monday, the outflow of funds from Bitcoin ETFs amounted to 85.7M dollars, but then the positive trend resumed, and by Friday, volumes recovered by 175.0M dollars. The industry is under pressure due to the uncertainty concerning the US Fed’s next steps: investors hope that the regulator will begin lowering interest rates in June but fears of postponing this decision to the second half of the year are growing amid accelerating inflation. Today at 14:30 (GMT 2), March statistics from the American labor market will be published: if it confirms its strength, regulator officials may agree to maintain high borrowing costs longer than expected. The possibility of such a scenario is also reflected in the latest department representatives’ comments, who confirmed the possibility of easing monetary policy this year but stated that it would be later and only if data confirmed a stable inflation weakening. Some analysts consider the current downward dynamics historically justified since the market corrected downwards in two or three weeks before Bitcoin halving in both 2016 and 2020.

Among the news of the week, it is worth noting the comments of the co-founder of the Ethereum network, Vitalik Buterin, who shared the details of the network update called Purge, which helps to simplify its internal structure and reduce the load on the nodes. The key innovations of the fork will be the EIP–6780 and EIP–4444 protocols: the first will optimize operation and increase security, and the second will limit the amount of data history storage. Meanwhile, Ripple announced the launch of its stablecoin, capable of competing with USDT and CRL, by the end of this year. The name of the new currency is not yet known but it will be backed by the American dollar and US government bonds and will initially be available only to US clients of the XRP Ledger and Ethereum networks, and will then expand to other regions. According to management, the token expands the corporation’s capabilities in both the institutional and DeFi spheres. Also this week, PayPal Holdings Inc. announced the launch of cross-border payments service Xoom, and now US users can send funds to 160 countries using the PYUSD stablecoin.

On April 4, the second halving in history in the Bitcoin Cash network took place at block No. 840000. The cost of the reward for the produced block decreased from 6.25 BCH to 3.12 BCH, which led to an increase in the rate by 8.9% in just the last 24 hours. BCH currently ranks thirteenth in terms of capitalization among all digital assets.

In general, the situation in the digital market remains difficult. Despite the current correction, the resumption of upward dynamics against expectations of halving in the Bitcoin network and the continued popularity of Bitcoin-ETF soon seems possible.