Major coins traded sharply lower Sunday evening as the global cryptocurrency market cap dropped 4.55% to $929.5 billion at 8:21 p.m. EDT.

Why It Matters: $Ethereum (ETH.CC)$ and $Bitcoin (BTC.CC)$ lost 24% and 11% of their respective values over the last seven days.

The two largest cryptocurrencies were in the red on Sunday evening even as U.S. stock futures were marginally higher at the time of writing.

Traders are looking forward to monetary policy decisions from the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan in the fresh trading week.

Commenting on the decline in Ethereum price after the "great success" that was the Merge, Lark Davis, a notable cryptocurrency investor tweeted, "Shame about the price action, but just like a [bitcoin] halving the effect is not instantaneous."

Justin Bennett predicted the first part of Bitcoin short liquidations around the 20,100 levels on Sunday. The cryptocurrency investor tweeted, "pump incoming."

In a more recent tweet, Bennett took a contrarian stance and said he should have "stayed bearish."

"But I did think we'd see more of a bounce early this week. And we still might, but things look pretty ugly [at the moment]."

Alternative.me's "Crypto Fear & Greed Index" was at "Extreme Fear" going into a new week of trading. Last week, the index also reflected "Extreme Fear."

OANDA senior market analyst Edward Moya said in a recent note, seen by Benzinga, that Bitcoin was lower as "risk appetite remains in hiding."

The analyst singled out a release from the White House which outlined a framework to regulate cryptocurrencies last week and said it "hardly puts anything major in motion."

New goals for the [U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission] and [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] were expected, while the proposed regulation on eliminating illegal activity fell short of complete guidelines on how that will be achieved." 

- said Moya.