Bitcoin, Ethereum & Crypto Dive as Celsius Adds Fuel to the Fed Fire This Week

cryptonews.com:

The bitcoin (BTC) and crypto market came under heavy selling pressure on Monday, fueled by fears in nearly all global risk markets related to high inflation and what the US Federal Reserve (Fed) might do to tame it. At the same time, the drama surrounding crypto lending platform Celsius(CEL) is adding fuel to the fire.

At 10:12 UTC, bitcoin (BTC) was down 12% over the past 24 hours and 19% over the past 7 days to USD 24,140, or the level last seen in December 2020. At the same time, ethereum (ETH) stood at USD 1,246, down 15% for the day and 31% for the week, revisiting its lows seen in January 2021.

BTC past 14 days:

The crash in the crypto market came as global stocks also sold off heavily, with stocks in Japan closing down 3% on Monday, and S&P 500 index futures at the time of writing pointing to an opening price on Wall Street 2.3% below Friday’s close.

Coinciding with the crypto selloff today was news from Celsius that the platform had halted all crypto withdrawals for clients. The news comes after rumors had circulated online for an extended period that the company is facing problems and may not be able to meet its customer obligations.

At the time of writing, the platform’s token CEL is down by close to 54% in the last 24 hours alone, trading at a price of USD 0.193. Over the past year, the token is now down a whopping 97%, per CoinGecko data.

Meanwhile, another key to fears that have taken hold of global financial markets now is the currently high inflation in the US, which has shown no signs of reaching a peak yet. On Friday last week, US inflation for May hit 8.6%, higher than the 8.3% analysts had expected.

With the Fed set to announce its next interest rate adjustment on Wednesday this week, traders are increasingly