Major cryptocurrency tokens saw negative trading on Wednesday as investors’ appetite for risk decreased due to dwindling hopes of an early interest rate drop from the US Federal Reserve. They were also looking to the minutes of the US central bank’s most recent meeting for guidance on future policy.

Ethereum was up 1.4% at $2,971, while Bitcoin was down 0.3% at $51,814. Over the previous day, the value of the world’s cryptocurrency market dropped by 0.21% to approximately $1.97 trillion.

Solana, Avalanche, Dogecoin, Polkadot, Toncoi, XRP, Internet Computer, and Shiba Inu dropped as much as 6% among other popular altcoins. Ethereum and Tron had a 2% increase.

Bitcoin saw a significant increase over the past day, hitting a new high of $53,000 for the year. But because of things like rising open interest and bad funding rates for bullish positions, it swiftly retraced to $50,750.

Throughout the upheaval, Ethereum showed endurance by rarely losing ground on its price and even breaking through the $3,000 mark.

“Ether has surged since the middle of January. This is mostly due to two factors. Firstly, Standard Chartered Bank anticipates that the SEC will allow spot Ethereum ETFs in May, which can be viewed as an outside confirmation from the traditional finance industry. This is the expectation of a spot ETF in the US. The development of the Ethereum network’s ‘Dencun upgrade’ is another important motivator.”

Currently, DeFi’s total volume is $6.73 billion, or 7.70% of the 24-hour volume of the entire cryptocurrency market. According to data available on CoinMarketCap, the total amount of stablecoins is currently $79.25 billion, or 90.62% of the 24-hour volume of the whole cryptocurrency market.

The largest cryptocurrency in the world, Bitcoin, had a decline in market capitalization to $1.015 trillion in the past day. Currently, 51.61% of the market is dominated by Bitcoin, according to CoinMarketCap. The volume of BTC increased by 44.8% to $31.55 billion in the past day.

After briefly falling to $50,700 in an attempt to breach the $53,000 barrier, Bitcoin quickly rose to $52,000. VanEck’s spot Bitcoin ETF, HODL, saw a 14X increase in trading volume in a single day and may be the cause of this price activity. Trading volume was $258 million.