Cryptocurrency prices today: Bitcoin, ether gain marginally while Solana, Cardano slip

Bitcoin price today rose marginally after dipping to a more than one-week low, buffeted by investor skittishness ahead of a looming Federal Reserve interest-rate hike and amid harsher regulatory scrutiny of the cryptocurrency sector. The digital token has been trading in the range between roughly $19,000 and $22,000. 

The world's largest and most popular cryptocurrency rose marginally to $21,120. The global cryptocurrency market cap today was above the $1 trillion mark, even as it was almost flat in the last 24 hours to $1.02 trillion, as per CoinGecko.

Rising interest rates and high-profile meltdowns like that of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital have pummeled digital tokens this year. Bitcoin is down 55% since the start of 2022.

The turmoil is leading to ever greater regulatory oversight of the industry. Coinbase Global Inc., for instance, is facing a US probe into whether it improperly let Americans trade digital assets that should have been registered as securities, reported Bloomberg.

On the other hand, Ether, the coin linked to the ethereum blockchain and the second largest cryptocurrency, gained nearly a per cent to $1,427. Meanwhile, dogecoin price today was trading 0.5% higher at $0.06 whereas Shiba Inu also surged over a per cent to $0.000011.

Other crypto prices' today performance were mixed as XRP, Solana, BNB, Litecoin, Stellar, Chainlink, Apecoin, Avalanche, Polkadot, Tether, Uniswap prices were trading with slight cuts over the last 24 hours whereas Polygon, Tron gained.

Even as the crypto sector shivers in the bleak winter, venture capitalists are pouring money into digital currency and blockchain startups at a pace that's set to outstrip last year's record.

In the first half of the year, VCs bet $17.5 billion on such firms, according to data from PitchBook. That puts investment on course to top the record $26.9 billion raised last year, reported Reuters.

A double whammy of macroeconomic headwinds and blow-ups at major projects this year have seen bitcoin plummet about 65% from its November record of $69,000. Companies have shuddered as prices fall, with major U.S. exchange Coinbase Global and NFT platform OpenSea among those to lay off hundreds of workers.

(With inputs from agencies)