Crypto Rally Slows Down: Bitcoin Price Falls Below $41,000!

• As of the time of preparation, Bitcoin is trading just above $41,000, with a decrease of 2.9% in the last 24 hours, resulting in a weekly drop of 3.9%.
• According to Dune Analytics article analysis dashboard, miners earned nearly $10 million from Ordinals transaction fees on Saturday, December 16th, and $8.4 million on Sunday, December 17th.
• While the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies dropped by 3.5% to $1.59 trillion in the last 24 hours, each of the top 20 coins, excluding stablecoins, experienced a decline throughout the day.

Bitcoin price recorded a critical decline as we started the 3rd week of December: Altcoins are losing blood after Bitcoin’s decline!

Bitcoin and Crypto Prices Declined

The price of Bitcoin recorded a critical drop as it fell below $41,000 on Monday morning, erasing the gains from the previous week and cooling off its rally. As of the time of preparation, Bitcoin is trading just above $41,000, with a decrease of 2.9% in the last 24 hours, resulting in a weekly drop of 3.9%. The price drop coincided with Bitcoin’s average transaction fee reaching a yearly high of $38.43, according to Ycharts data.

This increase in transaction fees is attributed to the growing popularity of Bitcoin Ordinals. Bitcoin Ordinals is one of the unique types of digital assets written on the smallest unit of Bitcoin, satoshi. According to the Dune Analytics article analysis dashboard, miners earned nearly $10 million from Ordinals transaction fees on Saturday, December 16th, and $8.4 million on Sunday, December 17th.

The high transaction fees caused by Ordinals seem to congest the Bitcoin network. As of the time of preparation, there were nearly 290,000 unconfirmed transactions in the mempool, indicating that transactions with fees below $1.37 are not a priority.

Altcoins Experience Significant Losses

Bitcoin’s decline echoes throughout the overall crypto market. While the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies dropped by 3.5% to $1.59 trillion in the last 24 hours, each of the top 20 coins, excluding stablecoins, experienced a decline throughout the day. Among the biggest losers, Avalanche leads with a drop of more than 11%, trading at $37.28.

The market downturn occurred on a day when Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, within the top 20 coins, experienced a nearly 4% drop, currently trading around $2,100. Memecoins were significantly affected by the market downturn, with Dogecoin dropping nearly 8%, Shiba Inu experiencing a 10% drop, and Solana-based meme coin BONK dropping more than 12%.