Bitcoin And Other Cryptocurrencies Drop Due To Middle East Tensions

(CTN News) – During the overnight hours of Saturday, the Bitcoin cryptocurrency market was heavily impacted by an unprecedented missile and drone attack on Israel by Iran.

As U.S. officials confirmed late on Saturday evening that the attack had taken place, bitcoin prices fell some 8% late on Saturday evening. The fall in the value of digital coins over the weekend was viewed as a reaction to the escalation of tensions in the Middle East, and was noted as one of the few risk assets trading at the weekend.

The Bitcoin price was trading at around $70,000 on Saturday evening, however, the price of bitcoin dropped below $62,000 at the end of the day, according to Bitstamp’s data.

The stock had rebounded to trade over $64,000 by Sunday morning, after trading as low as $62,000 on Friday. It is also worth mentioning that some coins, such as ether, were also heavily sold, with some of them down by as much as 10%.

Bitcoin’s price drops have been the steepest in more than a year, according to Bloomberg, with the cryptocurrency hitting new records recently amid a flurry of new money flowing into U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs as inflows continue to drive the cryptocurrency’s price up.

On the Middle East’s Eastern front, the events that took place overnight marked the first instance in which Iran has directly attacked Israel from its territory.

Earlier this week, Israel announced that it had identified 300 “threats of various forms” and that “99%” of those destined for its soil had been eliminated.

According to reports, the deluge of drones and missiles that were fired on Israel was in reaction to a suspected Israeli strike in Syria that resulted in the death of top Iranian officials.

It is reported that the Iranian currency fell to a record low of 750,000 rials per US dollar on the unofficial market around 10:30 a.m. on Sunday local time in accordance with data from the Bonbast foreign exchange monitoring website which tracks foreign exchange rates.

TA-35, which is the flagship index of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, was down 0.38% at 10:23 a.m. (London time), according to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

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