Bitcoin Price Falls After One-Hour Volume Spike

An hour of high-volume trading on Tuesday resulted in bitcoin (BTC) trading lower, giving back nearly half of the previous day’s gains.

At around 3 p.m. ET (15:00 UTC), trading volume on cryptocurrency exchanges spiked as bitcoin prices jumped from $8,674 to $8,898, almost a percentage point, within one hour. Coinbase, for example, saw volume rise from 437 trades to 1,699 trades from 14:00 to 15:00 UTC. Bitcoin is trending downward overall, dropping from a 24-hour high of $8,974 and currently in the red at 1.92 percent.

During that hour, the Federal Reserve announced a 50 basis point interest rate cut in an effort to boost the U.S. economy and ease concerns about the spread of coronavirus.

Bitcoin price and volume on Coinbase Pro, March 3, 2020.

This comes after bitcoin prices saw a 4.5 percent gain on Monday. The Standard & Poors 500 also showed positive gains Monday, up 4.6 percent. Year to date, bitcoin is up 21 percent while the S&P is down 5.5 percent.

Other notable cryptocurrency price movements as of Tuesday at 20:00 UTC include Neo (NEO) down 5 percent, ether (ETH) in the red 3 percent and XRP (XRP), down 2 percent. However, Dogecoin (DOGE) is out of the doghouse, with a 1 percent gain in the past 24 hours.

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Daniel Cawrey

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