🔸 Event that occurred on Friday, May 16, 2025.
Moody's, a very important company that assesses how safe it is to lend money to a country (like the United States), decided that the United States is no longer as safe as before because its debts are growing and they spend a lot on interest, this caused the prices of several important digital currencies (like ether, XRP, and dogecoin) to drop a bit, around 3%. Additionally, this news also caused the value of the stocks of the 500 largest companies in the United States, measured by an index called the S&P 500, to also decrease.
In other words, imagine that Moody's is like a risk rating agency. They give a score to countries so that investors know if it is a good idea to lend them money by buying their bonds (which are like government "IOUs"). Previously, the rating for the United States was the highest possible. But now, Moody's said that the risk has increased a little bit because the country owes more money and has to pay more interest on those debts. This news not only did not sit well with cryptocurrency investors, and that's why some sold, causing prices to drop, but it also worried investors in large companies, leading to a slight decline in the overall value of these companies (the S&P 500) as well.