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The minutes of the U.S. Federal Reserve's meeting in December were released on Wednesday, plunging the broader crypto market into great uncertainty and doubt amid the chance of a faster interest rate hike. Immediately after the release of said minutes, BTC dipped below its $45k support zone, piercing through the lower bound of a month-long price range. Within a matter of mere hours, it even fell to a local low near the $42.5k level. As of the time of writing, the largest cryptocurrency is consolidating near the $43k handle, with bearish trendlines extending toward the $41k level. If the price fails to rebound to the $44.8k zone, the short-term outlook for BTC will likely remain extremely bearish. Additionally, BTC's market cap dominance has also dropped to 37%, the lowest level it has been at since April 2018. BTC's price movement has affected most altcoins too, with ETH shedding 8% in the past 24 hours and other leading L1 tokens even recording double-digit percentage losses within a similar timeframe. There is a silver lining through all these though, as BTC's illiquid supply has still been steadily increasing. Further, even though the bears seem to be tightening their grips on the spot and derivatives markets, the NFT market seems to actually be witnessing a surprise return of the bulls. Ethereum's weekly NFT transaction volume recently breached the $1 billion mark, a level last seen in August 2021 when the NFT boom was at the height of its glory. The NFT space is also now getting increased attention from many top brands, celebrities and institutions, providing them with the necessary ingredients to potentially go on a rally through this unfortunate sea of red.
Airbnb's co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky hinted in a tweet on Wednesday that the online lodging marketplace is looking to enable crypto payments on its platform this year. In his tweet, Chesky reached out to his followers for ideas on any crypto-related services that the firm could work on in 2022. Out of more than 4,000 responses, the top idea suggested for Chesky to build in crypto payment capacities onto the Airbnb platform, to which Chesky replied that "we are looking into this". With Airbnb seeing up to $336 billion in payments volume since 2013, an integration of crypto-related services and capabilities onto their platform could turn out to be a huge boost for the entire crypto space indeed.