In yet another eventful and painful evening trading on Saturday, Bitcoin’s price tumbled by another five grand to a multi-week low of around $61,000.

The alternative coins were hit even harder, with numerous double-digit price declines. The main culprit for this crash was the rising tension between Iran and Israel.

BTC’s Rollercoaster Continues

It was just 48 hours ago when BTC’s price hovered calmly above $70,000, and it even challenged $71,000, but to no avail. Yet, the landscape changed for the worse on Friday evening after speeches from high-ranking officials representing the US central bank that said the Fed has no plans to start lowering interest rates anytime soon.

In a matter of minutes, the primary cryptocurrency’s price slumped by five to six grand and dropped to $65,000. Interestingly, almost all financial markets went downhill on Friday, as even gold’s price dropped by about 4%.

Bitcoin managed to recover some ground on Saturday morning and jumped to just over $67,000. However, then came the quickly escalating tension between Iran and Israel and the cryptocurrency’s price plunged once again.

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This time, the asset fell to a multi-week low of just over $61,000 (on Bitstamp), leaving more than $700 million in liquidations. It has bounced off rather nicely and currently sits above $64,000, but the risks remain, given that it is the only market opened for trading today.

Its market capitalization has declined by about $130 billion since Friday and is down to $1.270 trillion. Its dominance over the alts, though, has soared by approximately 2% within the same timeframe.

Alts Were Battered

As it typically happens when BTC heads south hard, so do most altcoins. In fact, they plummeted even more in the past 48 hours or so.

Although many have bounced off as well, the landscape is quite painful for a second day straight. As the graph below shows, there are quite a few double-digit price declines, while SOL, XRP, DOGE, TON, ADA, AVAX, SHIB, DOT, and ETH are still deep in the red.

The total crypto market cap dropped from nearly $2.8 trillion on Friday morning to about $2.330 trillion yesterday evening. It has recovered around $100 billion since then, but it is still 5% down on the day.