Cryptocurrency Prices Today : Bitcoin, Ethereum, Avalanche register a marginal dip

Bitcoin's market dominance dipped 0.07 percent to 41.75 percent and the currency was trading at $38,033.97 today. (Representative image)

The global cryptocurrency market capitalisation fell 1.01 percent over the last 24 hours to $1.81 trillion while trading volumes were down about 25.85 percent to $53.91 billion.

While decentralised finance (DeFi) accounted for 15.07 percent of the 24-hour cryptocurrency trading volume at $8.12 billion, stablecoins constituted 79.41 percent of the same at $42.81 billion.

Bitcoin's market dominance rose 0.30 percent to 42.03 percent and the currency was trading at $40,010.80 on the morning of February 20.

In rupee terms, Bitcoin fell 1.31 percent to trade at Rs 33,84,999, while Ethereum dipped 1.44 percent to Rs 2,40,000

Cardano was down 1.33 percent to Rs 83.86 and Avalanche fell 0.57 percent to Rs 7,285.7. Polkadot fell 1.74 percent to Rs 1,508 and Litecoin was down 2.63 percent to Rs 9,792.5 in the last 24 hours. Tether was up 0.09 percent to Rs 78.27.

Memecoin SHIB rose 2.47 percent, while Dogecoin was down by 0.85 percent to trade at Rs 11.52. Terra (LUNA) fell 2.48 percent to Rs 4,365.

The Canadian government's efforts to choke off the flow of funds to protesting truckers in Canada illustrate why cryptocurrencies exist, Ethereum founder VItalik Buterin said.

In an interview with the Denver conference, Buterin, who grew up in Canada, did not condone the "freedom convoys" that have been blaring their horns in Ottawa for the last week in opposition to COVID-19 restrictions.

But he described the government's response as heavy-handed, and crypto as a potential check on such overreach.

"If the government is not willing to follow the laws ... [and] give people a chance to defend themselves...and they just want to talk to the banks and basically cut out people's financial livelihoods without due process, that is an example of the sort of thing that decentralised technology is there to make more difficult," Buterin said.

In this way, crypto is not so much a radical technology as a restorative one, he argued.

As of 8:10 am, these were the prices of various cryptocurrencies in the Indian market (Data from WazirX.com)