A few hours ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Coronavirus a pandemic. The markets are declining, and Bitcoin as well.
The WHO and Coronavirus
Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) has called the outbreak of Coronavirus a pandemic. The announcement has marked a further drop for traditional financial markets, Bitcoin, and the crypto market. A pandemic is a disease that spreads simultaneously in several countries of the world. According to Tedros Adhanom, Director of the WHO, this is the case of the Coronavirus.
“We have evaluated that the Covid 19 can be characterized as a pandemic,” Adhanom said at a press-release.
Adhanom says that the high number of cases outside of China makes it necessary to change its classification from an epidemic to a pandemic. Also, this is a word that should not be used lightly since “it can cause an irrational fear, or an unwarranted feeling of hopelessness, which will lead to unnecessary suffering and death.”
Financial Markets
This irrational fear has quickly spread to the financial markets and the crypto market. This leads us to ask ourselves: What has been the impact on the price of Bitcoin?
Pandemic – What happens to Bitcoin?
Fear quickly settled in the American market after the WHO announcement, and the crypto market is not exempt. The Dow Jones has fallen 1,033 points to 23,571 according to Yahoo! Finance, while the S&P 500 has had a fall of 5.05% and Nasdaq 100 has fallen by 4.23 percent. Also, an analyst at Goldman Sachs assured that the S&P 500 has ended its bullish streak and that it could be one step away from a 15% cut in the coming weeks.
The bad omen has raised concerns about the possible negative impact of coronavirus on the world economy. Meanwhile, the cryptocurrencies market has not been without panic. Bitcoin is down 2.21% so far this day, starting the day with a price tag of $ 7,935 and, at the time of writing, being at $ 7,759. Nonetheless, Ethereum (ETH) has responded to the announcement more dramatically with a cumulative drop of the day of 5.85%
Despite the fact that Bitcoin’s decline has not been as marked as that of the traditional financial markets, this could be reversed within hours.
