On Thursday, Bitcoin started falling. At the time of writing, it is trading at $23,019.

According to CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin hit a low of $22,707 and a high of $24,196 over the past 24 hours.

However, cryptocurrency market players did not expect BTC to drop today, as the cryptocurrency has been rising steadily since the start of the week. Therefore, the value of BTC has increased by 14% since Monday. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the asset returned to its significant key level of $22,000 for the first time since June 8 as many bears ceased to exert the pressure on cryptocurrencies.

Moreover, the stocks of digital assets companies were also bullish amid BTC rapid growth the day before.

Thus, the North American company Applied Blockchain, Inc., a builder and operator of next-generation data centers, became the top gainer (+100%) in the past three days.

Meanwhile, the shares of prominent crypto mining giant Marathon Digital Holdings, Inc. jumped by 32.17%.

Besides, Bitcoin has already lost about 70% since November 2021 despite its significant gains in the last few days. Last year, the cryptocurrency renewed its all-time high of above $69,000. At the same time, many other digital assets have plummeted from their record levels.

Altcoin Market

Ethereum, Bitcoin's main rival, also dropped on Thursday. At the time of writing, it fell to $1,488.

At the same time, Ethereum has been rising steadily since the end of last week and has gained more than 30%. One of the project developers announced that the Ethereum blockchain might switch to a new Proof-of-Stake algorithm in mid-September. This news became the major catalyst for ETH soaring price.

Currently, the altcoin is still 71% below its all-time high recorded in November 2021 despite its successful attempts to return to previous highs.

Moreover, all major cryptocurrencies from the top 10 by capitalization, except for Binance USD and some stablecoins, followed BTC and ETH and entered into the red zone.

At the same time, Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) meme coins were top losers. Both of these altcoins plunged by over 8% in the past 24 hours.

According to CoinGecko, Evmos coin (+4.1%) topped the list of major gainers among the top 100 most capitalized digital assets, while Polygon (-14.6%) was the top loser in the last 24 hours.

As for the outcome of the past week, Ethereum Classic (+57.2%) was the top gainer among the hundred strongest cryptocurrencies, while PAX Gold (-2.8%) was considered the top loser.

Experts' outlook

The reason why cryptoanalysts make the most unrealistic forecasts about the future of digital coins is their unpredictable behavior.

The day before, after having analyzed BTC movement, famous Bitcoin analyst Willie Wu came to the conclusion that digital gold could break the capitulation structure and start to form the real bottom.

According to the expert, the breakout of the capitulation structure means that investors who bought Bitcoin at a high price began to sell it off, while other market makers bought those volumes back immediately. Traditionally, such a market situation is followed by the cryptocurrency reaching a real bottom.

Earlier, Glassnode analysts said that the capitulation in the cryptocurrency market would continue amid the ongoing extraordinary financial stress. Experts suggested that future pressures on the crypto market will continually increase and eventually trigger Bitcoin to fall below the $20,000 mark.

Former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes also announced his prediction of BTC future. The American businessman said in his blog that Bitcoin would soon reach the bottom and would recover rapidly as the US Federal Reserve would pump US economy with trillions of dollars.

Analysts also prepared forecast of Ethereum, BTC major rival. Many industry experts suggested that ETH could collapse dramatically by the end of this year. Recently, analysts at Finder updated their forecasts about the rate of altcoin, and most of them said that the asset would be at risk of falling to $675 by the end of 2022.

Crypto experts at Finder still believe in Ethereum's bright future in the long term despite the negative short-term forecast. Analysts expect that ETH will rise to $5,739 by 2025 and will reach $14,412 by 2030.

Notably, back in January 2022, economists at Finder predicted that ETH would surge to $26,338.

According to the outcome of its quarterly survey, 43% of respondents believe that currently is the right time to invest in Ethereum, 41% of people think it is better to hold it, and only 16% of respondents are confident that it is time to sell ETH.