Bitcoin (BTC) Falls 18% in 24 hours to $22,000, Sets 18-Month Low

The Federal Reserve is meeting this week, and will announce its plans regarding interest rate hikes this Wednesday.

On Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the consumer price index -- also known as the inflation rate -- increased 8.6% in May compared to May 2021. That marks the largest increase in 40 years, and it caused both stock prices and digital asset valuations on cryptocurrency exchanges to tumble heading into the weekend.

This morning, Yahoo! Finance shows that the slide continued as equity markets are down 3.66% at the time of writing while the cryptocurrency sector crashed 15.61% -- pushing the market valuation for the entire crypto universe below the $1 trillion threshold, according to CoinMarketCap. A contributing factor of this sell-off could be media reports that the Federal Reserve could announce this week a possible increase in interest rates of 0.75% or at least keep that possibility open for later this year to try to wrangle inflation.

That possibility seems to have hit Bitcoin especially hard.

Bitcoin price hits an 18-month low

At press time, the first and most valuable crypto asset -- BTC -- has crashed through long-established support levels by more than 18% to a price per coin of $28,812, according to CoinMarketCap. Bitcoin has not been that low since December 2020. Founded in 2008, and originally conceptualized as a peer-to-peer payment service, it has since morphed into a store of value that has long been touted as a hedge against inflation.

But that hasn't been the case since its all-time high of $68,789 per coin set on Nov. 10, 2021, and it has declined 67% from that price peak while inflation has increased more than 5% every month for more than a year.

Is Bitcoin a buy?

Every investor should only seek advice from certified financial experts, and not from any media article. Investors also need to know how much they can comfortably risk to invest while doing their own research. However, anyone who missed out on Bitcoin in the past should not pass up this golden opportunity to secure a position with the "gold standard" asset within the cryptocurrency space. It's unlikely that we'll see Bitcoin stay this low for long.