On Thursday, BItcoin is trading flat. At the moment of writing, its price is hovering near $29,758. According to CoinMarketCap, BTC has been trading within the range of $28,384 and $30,157 over the past 24 hours.

Ethereum, the main BTC counterpart, also started trading sideways on Thursday and is trading at $1,943 at the moment.

As for the top 10 altcoins, all of them dropped over the 24 hours. The top loser was Solana which declined by 4%.

Since Monday, Bitcoin has been struggling to reverse a seven-week downward trend, but it continues to hover near $30,000. The cryptocurrency has already lost about 60% in value since November 2021, when it hit an all-time high of $69,000.

At the same time, since the beginning of May, BTC has decreased by almost 20%. In April, the coin sagged by 16.2% - the lowest indicator of this month since 2011.At the end of the first quarter of 2022, Bitcoin lost 1.5%. However, March was a rather favorable period for the asset, as a result of which it reported growth of 10%, having strengthened for the second month in a row.

In January, Bitcoin lost more than 16%, and in February, its price rose by 12%.

What puts pressure on the market?

Experts call the armed Russian-Ukrainian conflict the main reason for such a strong decline in the digital assets market lately. Due to the sanctions imposed against Russia, the cryptocurrency market is losing a large share of consumers from this country.

Another important downward factor for the value of virtual assets was the permanently increasing dominance of the United States in the cryptocurrency market. This state of affairs was a continuation of the political war that has been going on in the currency arena since 2014. This dominance of America became especially evident in the past year when China imposed bans on the use of virtual coins.

The US Federal Reserve's monetary policy can also be called an additional incentive to disappoint investors in the reliability of digital assets.

Thus, cryptoanalysts link the current decline in the market of virtual assets to the US Federal Reserve's recent increase in the benchmark interest rate. Investors are concerned that the rapid growth of inflation in the future will force the regulator to raise the rate even faster.

Yesterday, Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Jerome Powell said that the central bank planned to act more aggressively in order to return the inflation rate in the US to the target of 2%. The US Federal Reserve's decision, Powell said, would not be affected even by the prospects of a decline in the country's economy in the short term.

Notably, at the end of the last meeting, the Fed raised its key rate by 50 basis points, now its range is 0.75-1% per annum. Earlier in March, the regulator raised the rate by 25 basis points. The last time the central bank raised the rate at two meetings in a row was back in 2006. At the same time, the increase of the index by 50 basis points has not occurred since 2000.

Thus, the latest decision of the US Federal Reserve showed that monetary policy in America is of great importance for the crypto market, which means that any news from the central bank of the country can provoke the strongest volatility in the value of its leaders.

Finally, increased regulation of the cryptocurrency market is becoming the cause of the low confidence of its participants in this sector.

Bright future ahead?

Recently, experts from the US multinational financial conglomerate JPMorgan said that the fair price of BTC is $38,000, and cryptocurrencies have overtaken real estate as one of the preferred "alternative assets."

Considering that at the time of writing Bitcoin is trading near $29,700, the fair price of the coin announced by analysts is 28% higher than the actual one.

In addition, economists from JPMorgan are confident in the further growth of the first cryptocurrency and digital asset market as a whole.

Despite Bitcoin's continuing decline, many crypto experts also believe BTC may strengthen soon. For example, Katie Wood, founder of investment firm ARK Invest, previously revealed that she had a positive outlook on the future of digital coins. According to Wood, the bearish trend in the cryptocurrency market will soon be replaced by a bullish one.

Following the head of ARK Invest, famous economist Benjamin Cowan also stated his full confidence that in the near future the cryptocurrency would show spectacular growth.