Bitcoin Slips to $27K as Escalating Hamas-Israel Conflict Dampens Investor Confidence

Bitcoin slipped 1.2% to trade just over $27,000 during the Asian afternoon hours on Wednesday as worsening scenarios in the Hamas-Israel conflict shattered investor confidence in riskier assets.

Earlier this week, traders told CoinDesk they expected prices to move lower as investors shy away from traditional equities and risk assets in favor of gold and oil – whose prices have gained as much as 6% in the past week.

Crypto markets slumped over 1.6% in the past 24 hours, the CoinDesk Market Index (CMI), a broad-based guage for tracking hundreds of tokens, shows. Ether fell 2.2% to extend weekly losses to over 5%, while XRP tokens led a decline in alternative currencies with a 3% drop.

Among other major tokens, Polkadot’s DOT and Polygon’s MATIC slumped 3%, while Tezos’s XTZ dropped 8%. Render network’s RNDR was the only gainer among large-cap tokens with a 3% gain in the past 24 hours.

FxPro market analysts said in a daily note that bitcoin’s attempt to break the $28,000 level last week triggered a “wave of selling that took the price back to $27,000,” with the profit taking suggesting investors were not keeping their money held up in risky bets just yet.

“Interestingly, the pressure on Bitcoin came when the risk appetite in traditional markets was recovering,” FxPro said, citing Tuesday’s gains in U.S. stocks. “We attribute this to Monday’s US defaulted debt markets rather than the moving of money from one asset to another.”