Cryptocurrency prices fell late Wednesday and traded lower Thursday after the Federal Reserve skipped a rate hike but signaled for two additional interest rate increases later this year. The price of bitcoin retreated below $25,000 for the first time since March overnight Wednesday while ethereum tumbled to three-month lows.
Bitcoin, Ethereum Dive
Bitcoin recovered to $25,450 Thursday afternoon from its overnight low of $24,789. The move marked the first time the world's largest cryptocurrency fell below its $25,000 level since mid-March after swinging from $26,000 to $28,000 for the last several weeks in May.
Ethereum traded around $1,666 late Thursday after falling to three-month lows of $1,623. The overnight losses pushed the No. 2 crypto below $1,700 for the first time since early March. Ethereum trended near $1,900 early last week prior to the Securities and Exchange Commission's crackdown on exchanges.
The crypto markets were rattled last week after the SEC charged two of the top exchanges, Binance and Coinbase, with rules violations.
NFT Interest Falls Off
Meanwhile, interest in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) plummeted over the past year. Google search interest in the term peaked on June 19-25 last year but tanked 68% by the week of June 4-10, according to a report from BanklessTimes.
"As the hype around NFTs has cooled, people's interest in them has also waned," BanklessTimes CEO Jonathan Merry said in the release. "NFTs experienced an unprecedented surge in value before, attracting speculative investors. But the market would always correct itself, and that's what we're seeing now."
Floor prices for NFTs, or the lowest price for an NFT in a collection, also fell. The price floor for Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs carved 27% lower over the last 90 days to 45.22 ETH, according to token tracker NFT Price Floor. The collection hit a record high of 128 ETH on April 30, 2022.
CryptoPunks, the largest NFT collection by market capitalization, saw its floor price carve 26% lower over the last three months.
Floor prices for The Sandbox and Decentraland, which utilize NFTs to build their versions of the metaverse, nearly halved over the last 90 days.
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