Bitcoin, Ethereum, others bounce back after days of torment for investors; mcap recovers from $1.47T

The crypto market edged slightly higher on Tuesday after nearly two weeks of torment for investors during which they lost nearly a trillion dollars in value. The total market cap of all cryptos, as per CoinGecko, had declined from $2.61 trillion as of May 12 to $1.47 trillion as of May 24 before rebounding to $1.77 trillion as of 6.30 p.m IST Tuesday. The price of Bitcoin also bounced back to over $40,000 on Tuesday afternoon after falling to $32,500 on Sunday from nearly $58,000 on May 12. Likewise, Ethereum recovered from $1,853 on Sunday to $2,753 in the wee hours of Tuesday. Dogecoin also showed improvement, with its price rising scaling back from 28 cents on Sunday to 38 cents on Tuesday.

The marginal recovery in the crypto market followed a tweet by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and business analytics company MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor on meeting the Bitcoin miners in North America over sustainable and transparent crypto mining.

Yesterday I was pleased to host a meeting between @elonmusk & the leading Bitcoin miners in North America. The miners have agreed to form the Bitcoin Mining Council to promote energy usage transparency & accelerate sustainability initiatives worldwide. https://t.co/EHgLZ9zvDK

— Michael Saylor (@michael_saylor) May 24, 2021

This came days after Musk had stressed the “insane” amount of energy required for producing Bitcoin. Musk had also reiterated his call for a “Carbon tax” (a fee imposed on the burning of coal, gas, and other carbon-based fuels) amid concerns around “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel,” as per a statement tweeted by Musk on May 13. Musk had even announced that Tesla would stop accepting bitcoin in payment for its electric vehicles due to environmental concerns.

While cryptos continue to fluctuate, fund managers have been of the view that Bitcoin is a bubble. At least as per the April 2021 Global Fund Manager Survey by Bank of America, involving around 200 institutional, mutual, and hedge fund managers globally, 74 per cent respondents believed Bitcoin to be a bubble while only 16 per cent disagreed with the notion.