An hour of high-volume trading on Tuesday resulted in bitcoin (BTC) trading lower, giving back nearly half of the previous day’s gains.
At around 3 p.m. ET (15:00 UTC), trading volume on cryptocurrency exchanges spiked as bitcoin prices jumped from $8,674 to $8,898, almost a percentage point, within one hour. Coinbase, for example, saw volume rise from 437 trades to 1,699 trades from 14:00 to 15:00 UTC. Bitcoin is trending downward overall, dropping from a 24-hour high of $8,974 and currently in the red at 1.92 percent.
During that hour, the Federal Reserve announced a 50 basis point interest rate cut in an effort to boost the U.S. economy and ease concerns about the spread of coronavirus.
This comes after bitcoin prices saw a 4.5 percent gain on Monday. The Standard & Poors 500 also showed positive gains Monday, up 4.6 percent. Year to date, bitcoin is up 21 percent while the S&P is down 5.5 percent.
Other notable cryptocurrency price movements as of Tuesday at 20:00 UTC include Neo (NEO) down 5 percent, ether (ETH) in the red 3 percent and XRP (XRP), down 2 percent. However, Dogecoin (DOGE) is out of the doghouse, with a 1 percent gain in the past 24 hours.