Crypto prices today: Bitcoin set for monthly fall, ApeCoin outshines counterparts

The leader in the cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin is moving towards its first monthly drop since January as rising borrowing rates reduce investors' appetite for riskier assets. On Friday, Bitcoin faced a steep selloff to the point it erased the $39,000-mark.

As per CoinMarketCap data, Bitcoin's price is currently at $38,952.83. However, Bitcoin's dominance is stood currently at 41.70%, an increase of 0.08% over the day. The second-largest crypto Ethereum also dipped and traded a little over $2,850. Broadly, the cryptocurrency market was in the red.

Data given on CoinDesk showed that Bitcoin has dropped by more than 17% in a month, while Ethereum dropped over 15%.

Teong Hng, chief executive of Hong Kong-based crypto investment firm Satori Research said, “Bitcoin, despite all the positive news on adoption by institutions, still failed to gain traction higher on the poor macro backdrop, specifically rate hikes in the U.S.,” reported by Bloomberg.

The Satori Research chief further added, “Interest from retail has also decreased as we see the funding rates between futures and physical collapsed.”

On the other hand, ApeCoin which is a token tied to the popular Bored Apes NFTs, defied the broader selling tone of the crypto markets and witnessed massive buying. ApeCoin surged by 5.5% and was trading near $22.83. In the past seven days, ApeCoin has made nearly 54% gains.

ApeCoin has a market valuation of nearly $6.5 billion currently. Demand for this token has been stellar this week due to anticipation of its virtual land sales in its metaverse, which is scheduled on May 1.

Joshua Lim, head of derivatives at New York-based Genesis Global Trading in the Bloomberg report said, "The spike was driven by over $40 million in perpetual swap liquidations in the last 24 hours, mostly concentrated in short positions on OKX, Binance, and FTX."

Lim added, "We’ve seen a pick up in borrowing demand and derivative interest in APE/USD options as trading firms anticipate some reversion in price after the land sale ends."

On CoinMarketCap, the global crypto market cap is $1.78 trillion, a 1.33% decrease over the last day. However, in volume terms, the total crypto market over the last 24 hours is around $93.72B, which makes a 10.23% increase.

The total volume in DeFi is currently $9.00 billion, 9.60% of the total crypto market 24-hour volume. The volume of all stable coins is now $79.97 billion, which is 85.33% of the total crypto market's 24-hour volume.