Bitcoin and Ethereum Dip as PEPE Falls 9% on Fading Meme Coin Mania

By Mat Di Salvo

Bitcoin slid on Wednesday—and took the rest of the crypto market with it—in what has been a sluggish month for the asset. 

The biggest cryptocurrency by market cap was trading for $27,105 at 9am New York time, down 3% in 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. 

At one point, it slid sharply and nearly dropped below the $27,000 mark.  Late last night it was trading for $27,626.

Ethereum, the second biggest digital asset, was also down, trading for $1,868, a 2.3% drop in the past day.

Nearly all the top coins and tokens shed value today, with Solana, Polygon, and Dogecoin all experiencing significant sell-offs.

And meme coin mania seems to have died down: Pepe, a new token launched at the end of April which experienced astronomical gains, dropped by 9% in 24 hours.

Sui, a highly-anticipated layer-1 blockchain which launched last month, has also been hit particularly hard, trading at a 24-hour loss of over 6% for $0.96.

The sharp drop in prices comes as the U.S. Congress races to carve out a debt-limit deal to avoid a default in the world's biggest economy. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned weeks ago that it would be an "economic catastrophe" were the U.S. were to default on its debt.

And a top U.S. Federal Reserve official today said that there was no compelling case for the central bank to stop hiking up interest rates: a strategy which has led investors to shift "risk-on" assets like equities and cryptocurrency.

Incidentally, the S&P500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average indices were down on Wednesday too.

Investors also are more focused on tech stocks, particularly due to a surge in interest in the artificial intelligence sector. Computing company Nvidia yesterday overtook tech giants Tesla and Meta in terms of market cap, soaring to a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion.

Bitcoin last month touched a 10-month high of $30,000 per coin. It has since dropped, but the asset is up considerably since the start of the year, when it was trading for just $16,615.

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