Cryptocurrency prices today crash as Bitcoin below $19,000, ether plunges over 10%

livemint.com:

Cryptocurrency prices today remained in the red, hampered by a further drop in the second largest token Ether as well as the prospect of a global wave of monetary tightening this week. Bitcoin, the world's largest and most popular cryptocurrency was trading more than 6% lower at $18,830, dropping below the $19,000 mark. The global crypto market cap today fell below the $1 trillion mark, as it was down over 4% in the last 24 hours at $974 billion, as per CoinGecko.

On the other hand, Ether, the coin linked to the ethereum blockchain and the second largest cryptocurrency, plunged over 10% to over a two-month low at $1,370. An Ether jump since mid-June that was spurred by hype around an upgrade of the Ethereum blockchain is rapidly unwinding now the revamp is done. Meanwhile, investors are bracing for volatility from the jumbo interest-rate hike expected this week from the Federal Reserve to fight price pressures.

Ethereum’s revamp makes it vastly more energy efficient and paves the way for it to scale up and become quicker, the network’s developers have said. The move to a so-called proof-of-stake approach from proof-of-work was years in the making and seems to have gone smoothly, though hiccups remain possible.

The merge is just the start of a series of upgrades that are to come on Ethereum to make it more scalable and decentralized. Many challenges still await the second-largest cryptocurrency including a potential regulatory backlash.

Meanwhile, dogecoin price today was also trading about 7% lower at $0.05 whereas Shiba Inu tumbled more than 9% to $0.000011. Other crypto prices' today performance also declined as XRP, Uniswap, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche, Binance USD, Polkadot, Litecoin, Apecoin, Cardano, Stellar,