Bitcoin began trading sideways on Thursday morning, but over the past few hours, bearish sentiment has prevailed in the digital asset market and the BTC price has dipped 1.7% to $16,474.

According to CoinMarketCap, a cryptocurrency price tracking website, over the past 24 hours, the highest value of bitcoin reached $16,960, and the low was $16,430.

Experts believe that the key reason for the fall is the decline in US stock indices on Wednesday. According to the results of trading, the S&P 500 index sank 0.83%, while the NASDAQ Composite fell 1.54%.

By the way, since the beginning of 2022, analysts have increasingly begun to emphasize the high level of correlation between the US securities market and virtual assets amid intense anticipation by both of the consequences of the geopolitical conflict in Eastern Europe and further steps by the US Federal Reserve.

Earlier, experts from the investment company Arcane Research have already stated that the correlation of BTC and technology securities has reached its highest since July 2020.

In addition, economists from the TradingView analytical platform said that the relationship between the cryptocurrency market and the US stock market reached 70% in the past quarter.

Over the past week, the cost of the first cryptocurrency has fallen by 11%.

Altcoin market

Ethereum, the main competitor of bitcoin, started Thursday with a slight rise, but later moved to a correction. At the time of writing, the coin was trading at $1,210.

Crypto experts suggest that ETH has two scenarios ahead. If the coin breaks the resistance level around $1,280, it will soon have an important psychological mark of $1,300. A confident break above this resistance level will provoke a tangible recovery wave, when Ethereum can rise to $1,350, and later rush to $1,400.

If the altcoin fails to rise above the important key mark of $1,300, it will start a new decline, where the price of $1,225 per coin will become the initial support level, analysts say. The next key support will be $1,200, and then $1,170 later. If the bulls do not defend Ethereum support at $1,170, the altcoin risks falling to $1,100 in the near future.

As for cryptocurrencies from the top 10 by capitalization, within the past day, all coins, except for the stablecoin Tether, were traded in the red zone. At the same time, the worst results were recorded by Polygon (-4.68%).

According to the results of the past week, in the top ten of the strongest digital assets, the drop list was headed by the Cardano coin (-2.06%), and the list of growth was led by Dogecoin (+11.44%).

According to CoinGecko, the world's largest virtual asset data aggregator, over the past 24 hours, among the top 100 most capitalized digital assets, Trust Wallet Token (+9.93%) took the first place in the list of growth, and the worst results were shown by the Huobi coin (-7.20%).

According to the results of the past week, the Huobi digital asset (-21.40%) also showed the worst results among the top hundred strongest digital assets, and the Trust Wallet Token (+100.96%) showed the best results.

According to CoinGecko data, as of Thursday morning, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies failed to settle above the important key level of $850 billion and stands at $824.845 billion.

Since last November, when the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies exceeded $3 trillion, it has more than tripled.