Uneasy about the tightening of U.S. monetary policy and the shutdown of the Internet in Kazakhstan, the world’s second-largest Bitcoin mining center, Bitcoin fell to its lowest point in three months late on Friday.
According to data from Coin Metrics, after 10:50 am Eastern Time on Friday, the price of Bitcoin fell below the $41,000 mark to $40,749.90, the lowest level since September 29. Its last transaction price fell 2.9% to $41,947.75.
Earlier this week, the world’s largest cryptocurrency began to fall after the Federal Reserve’s December meeting minutes hinted that the U.S. Central Bank would curtail its pandemic stimulus measures.
Hawkish remarks triggered a sell-off in global stock markets and spread to the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin‘s competitors often describe it as an asset that has nothing to do with traditional financial markets, but experts have noticed that the price movements of Bitcoin and stocks are increasingly similar.
Other digital currencies continued to decline on Friday, with Ethereum down 6.8% and Solana down 7.7%.
Another piece of news that is bad for cryptocurrency prices is that the President of Kazakhstan shut down Internet services after a fatal protest against the government.
According to data from the Cambridge Alternative Finance Center, this Central Asian country accounts for 18% of the Bitcoin network processing capacity. As China bans mining activities related to virtual currencies, many crypto miners fled China to neighboring Kazakhstan.
It is estimated that the Internet shutdown in Kazakhstan has caused as many as 15% of the Internet to go offline.
Marcus Sotiriou, an analyst at GlobalBlock, a British digital asset broker, said that Bitcoin’s computing power “has no direct relationship with the price of Bitcoin, but it shows the security of the network, so the decline may scare investors in the short term.” In a note last Thursday.