Top cryptocurrency prices today: Ethereum, Solana and Terra tank up to 6%

New Delhi: The cryptocurrency market continued to slide on Friday with lower volumes, following weaker sentiments in riskier asset classes.

Barring dollar-pegged stablecoins and Cardano, all other seven out of the top 10 digital tokens were trading lower at 9.00 am IST. Solana, Ethereum and Terra tanked between 4-6 per cent each, whereas Cardano held minor gains.

The global crypto market cap dropped over a per cent $2.04 trillion mark compared to the last day. The total crypto market volume jumped about 14 per cent to $101.89 billion.

What's cooking in India?
Polytrade Finance, a decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform providing working capital to SMEs in the real world using crypto liquidity, on Thursday announced its listing on cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX.

Gurukula Kangri, deemed to be a university by UGC, has partnered with WazirX to provide a free course in blockchain technology. This bilingual course will be available for free of cost in Hindi and English for anyone with internet access.

Expert's Take
"While Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to struggle, other cryptos such as Cardano, Dogecoin and Shiba Inu have picked up slightly. Decentraland and Cosmos have observed a rise in the past 24 hours, which is good news," said Edul Patel, Co-founder and CEO Mudrex.

"But reasons behind the fall of two major cryptos can be due to various factors such as uncertainty around the Covid variant, inflation, and fear of regulation. This trend may go on for a few more days," he added.

Global Updates
The government of El Salvador has proposed 20 bills for the legal and financial framework for Volcano Bonds, a $1 billion Bitcoin bond issue. The government has said that Bitcoin bonds will fund the creation of the proposed Bitcoin City.

Cryptocurrencies slid sharply after the US Federal Reserve released minutes of its December meeting in which the central bank signaled it could start raising interest rates to tackle stubbornly high inflation.