The cryptocurrency market was under pressure on Monday, struggling to digest the prospect of future rate hikes

Bitcoin slipped below the $20,000 mark on Monday, something it hadn't done since mid-July. At 10:55am, the main virtual currency was trading around 19,818 dollars on the Bitstamp platform, down by nearly 6.4% on a weekly basis. Its price rose again in the afternoon to $20,300 around 5 pm GMT. The price of its main rival, Ether, had fallen by 7.3% to 1450 dollars, before he also limited his losses to 1,532 dollars at the end of the day.

The market value of the 12,000 cryptocurrencies listed by the specialized site CoinGecko also fell below the $1 trillion threshold, i.e. pr& Degrave; s by a third of the record capitalization reached in November last year, before rising to 1,024 billion dollars at 5 p.m. GMT.