Cryptocurrency prices have fallen sharply over the past few hours, with Bitcoin (BTC) down around 3% over the past 24 hours, while major Altcoins, including XRP, BNB and SOL, have fallen 4% to 5% over the same period.
The broader cryptocurrency market, represented by the Coindesk 20 index (CD20), lost about 3.3% of its value over that period. Sharp Drop reduces BTC performance by 1.7% in a week, while CD20 is down nearly 5%.
Over the past 24 hours, more than $300 million long positions have been settled on centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, but those platforms have settled $38.8 million worth of shorts.
Investors appear to be part of a wider intermittent move between traders as they anticipate the impact of President Donald Trump’s mutual tariffs, which is due to take effect on April 2.
Just this week, consumer confidence data fell even further than expected, but the index of future expectations was at its 12-year low, well below the level associated with the recession.
This confluence of factors led investors to reduce exposure to risky assets and to fly to safety. Coindesk Data’s latest Stablecoin report shows that gold-backed cryptocurrencies are benefiting from the risk-off move as market capitalization rose above $1.4 billion in March.
Gold-backed cryptocurrencies actually counter the market’s bearish trend. CD20 has dropped by more than 3% in the last 24 hours, but tokens including PaxG and Xaut have increased by 0.7% to over $3,100. These tokens have grown by more than 18% since the start of the year, but BTC has dropped by 12.5% so far this year and CD20 indexes have dropped by 28%.