It comes after days of sideways action for BTC, which has failed to meaningfully stay above $20,000 since last Friday.
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Bitcoin plunged below $19,000 on Tuesday for the first time in two months.
The correction was sudden and brutal — and CoinMarketCap data shows the world's biggest cryptocurrency tumbled from $19,780 to $19,037 in just 50 minutes.
Barely an hour later, bulls failed to prevent a further slide below $19,000.
Overall, Bitcoin has fallen by 6% over the past 24 hours. And Ether — which had been showing signs of strength as The Merge approaches — has also handed back gains from recent days.
It comes after days of sideways action for BTC, which has failed to meaningfully stay above $20,000 since last Friday.
Global stock markets have also sustained losses against a backdrop of a strengthening dollar and growing concerns that the Federal Reserve will increase interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq has been on a seven-day losing streak — and fell by a further 0.7% in Tuesday trading.
Extreme Fear Endures
The latest Crypto Fear and Greed Index is flashing a score of 24 — indicating Extreme Fear — as bearish sentiment reverberates through Crypto Twitter.
Renowned Bitcoin skeptic Peter Schiff has been adding salt to the wound too, tweeting:
"Markets rarely give investors much time to buy the bottom. Bitcoin has been trading near $20K for the past 12 days. More likely $20,000 will prove to be a false bottom, giving suckers plenty of time to climb aboard a sinking ship. Better to abandon ship before the bottom drops out."
Schiff went on to claim that Bitcoin's dominance has now fallen to 38.1% — the lowest since June 2018. He warned:
"Competing with almost 21,000 other intrinsically worthless digital tokens, NFTs and crypto-related equities is taking a toll. Even if Bitcoin is scarce, its alternatives are not."
His own son Spencer has accused him of missing the bigger picture, adding:
"If you're bullish on an asset and your time horizon is long enough, short-term volatility shouldn't reduce your confidence at all. Patience is key!"
But there's no denying that a prolonged crypto winter could have severe consequences for some firms in the industry. Indeed, KPMG has warned that more businesses could go bust between now and the end of the year following an 18-month period of "over-enthusiasm and over-investment" — joining a number of crypto lenders and hedge funds on the scrapheap.
A BTC mining pool that's responsible for 10% of the network's hash rate also added to market jitters by confirming it was freezing withdrawals because of liquidity issues.
