Meme Coins in Retreat as Bitcoin (BTC) Struggles to Maintain $71K (Market Watch)

Bitcoin's price rally was halted at just under $72,000 despite impressive ETF inflows yesterday, and the asset has fallen by about a thousand since then.

Most altcoins are also slightly lower today after yesterday's big gains, but BNB is still above $700, while LINK is down 3%.

BTC is struggling at $71k

Bitcoin had a quiet weekend with its price primarily around $67,500 after recovering from Friday's drop to $66,600. However, Monday was a more eventful and positive day for the bulls, as the asset jumped by almost three lakhs and briefly crossed the coveted $70,000 mark.

This was followed by another minor bounce that saw the cryptocurrency fall to $68,700, but the bulls were back on the attack on Wednesday.

This culminated in prices rising to a 15-day peak of $71,767. Thus, the underlying digital asset is less than 3% away from its all-time high recorded in mid-March. These gains came amid another day of huge inflows entering US Bitcoin ETFs.

However, these amounts were not enough to sustain Bitcoin's performance and the cryptocurrency fell by about a thousand dollars and now stands just below $71,000. Its market capitalization has fallen below $1.4 trillion and its altcoin dominance is 50.3% on CG.

Meme coins in decline

After yesterday's massive gains, most larger-cap alternative stocks have turned red today. This is the case with BNB, SOL, XRP, DOGE, TON, ADA, SHIB, and DOT, but their daily rebounds are negligible compared to their increases yesterday.

LINK and UNI are down a bit more (3% and 4.5% respectively), but the former is still above $17, while the latter is north of $10.

Some of the most popular coins have lost even more value. For example, WIF is down 6%, FLOKI is down 5%, and BONK is down 4.5%.

The total cryptocurrency market cap has fallen by $30 billion since yesterday's peak, but is still close to $2.8 trillion.