Ethereum’s price dropped below $3,100 Saturday, extending a slide that started Wednesday afternoon. Ethereum had been hovering around $3,200 in recent days.
Big drops this week to Ethereum and Bitcoin followed a disappointing December jobs report and the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve Board’s December meeting, which signaled the central bank would begin slowing down measures to prop up the economy as it continues to improve.
After topping $4,100 on Dec. 27, Ethereum has ranged between $3,000 and $4,000 in the days since. It’s been between $3,000 and $3,900 so far this week.
Despite the recent slump, Ethereum still had a relatively strong close to 2021. Ethereum et a new all-time when it went over $4,850 on Nov. 10, and it carried that strength into December before falling back by the end of the month.
Even with the late slump, Ethereum closed the year way over where it was at the start: In January 2021, Ethereum’s price was just a little over $1,000.
The volatility and slumping prices comes as the U.S. navigates new economic uncertainty over the Omicron COVID-19 variant, new comments by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell about the health of the economy, and ongoing comments by U.S. policymakers like SEC Chairman Gary Gensler about cryptocurrency regulation.
Like, Ethereum, Bitcoin has stalled over the past month as well after its own strong November; Bitcoin set a new all-time high when it went over $68,000 on Nov. 10. The future of cryptocurrency is sure to include plenty more volatility in the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum, and experts’ advice for investors remains the same.
What Should Ethereum Investors Do?
As with any long-term investment, experts advise to ignore the ups and downs. The latest high price doesn’t mean Ethereum’s volatility has gone away.
“The real question is, owning these coins, are they going to continue to experience compound, exponential growth? Nothing in the fundamentals of cryptocurrency tells me that answer is yes,” says Jeremy Schnieder, the investing expert behind Personal Finance Club.
Because there’s no guarantee that any crypto’s value will increase, experts advise to never invest more than 5% of your portfolio in cryptocurrency. Never invest at the risk of not meeting other financial goals like paying off high-interest debt or saving for retirement.
If you’ve met all of those benchmarks, the best thing you can do is ignore the hype around new record highs or lows. Like with traditional, long-term investing, the best thing you can do is “set it and forget it,” Humphrey Yang, the personal finance expert behind Humphrey Talks, previously told NextAdvisor.
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