Market Wrap: What happened with the top five cryptocurrencies this week? (24-Dec-2021 to 31-Dec-2021)

The small bull run we saw last week has been nullified by the price drops over this week, dashing any hopes for a last minute rally before 2022.

It seems market sentiment is still bearish on what the impacts of the Omicron COVID-19 variant will be, especially after the New Year’s period. It’s unclear if some governments, especially those in Europe, will institute harsh lockdowns after the parties are over.

129,800 call option contracts worth almost US$6 billion are expected to expire on Friday (Saturday in Australia), which will be one of the largest Bitcoin option expirations of 2021, providing a sentiment of wariness in the market for the shorter term.

Let’s take a look at the highs and lows for the week.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin has dropped by seven per cent over the week, rising to nearly US$52,000 on Tuesday afternoon before steadily sliding by nearly US$5,500 over the next few days to hit a seven-day low of US$46,574 on Thursday morning.

Ethereum

Ethereum had been mostly stable around the US$4,000 mark over the last few weeks. It followed Bitcoin in a slide to a weekly low of US$3,644 on Thursday, wiping nearly US$500 off the value.

Binance Coin

Binance Coin was steady around US$540 early this week, even peaking to US$569 early Tuesday, it since steadily fell to a low of US$512 today, marking a 6.3 per cent fall this week.

Solana

Solana had a very slight rally to start the week, rising by US$10 to a seven-day high of US$204, it suffered the same fate as the others on this list, and lost its gains within 12 hours. From there, it continued to fall to the weeks low of US$170 on Thursday, losing 9.8 per cent for the week.

Cardano

Behind Solana, Cardano has the second most significant losses for the week at 8.6 per cent. It also followed the price movement of Solana, rallying early to this week’s high of US$1.58 on Monday evening, then falling to US$1.31 by Thursday afternoon.