Bitcoin drops below $34,000 over the weekend, extending Friday’s losses

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Bitcoin is a volatile asset, and has been known to swing more than 10% higher or lower in a single day.
Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Bitcoin continued to slide after a broader stock sell-off in the U.S. last week sent the cryptocurrency market into a frenzy and prompted bitcoin to plummet by roughly 10%.

Bitcoin, the world’s largest digital currency by market value, was down more than 3% at $34,582.36 on Sunday, according to data from Coin Metrics. This year, Bitcoin has been trading in a narrow range as it attempts to reclaim its highs of late 2021.

The drop comes after the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 1,000 points on Thursday and the Nasdaq plunged by 5%. Those losses marked the worst single-day drops since 2020. The Dow and Nasdaq fell again on Friday.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point as it responds to inflation pressures.

The stock market rallied after Fed chair Jerome Powell said a larger rate hike of 75 basis points isn’t being considered. But by Thursday, investors had erased the Fed rally’s gains.

The global cryptocurrency market cap was at $1.68 trillion on Sunday, according to data from CoinGecko.com, and cryptocurrency trading volume in the last day was at $119 billion.

CNBC’s Tanaya Macheel contributed reporting