It’s been a brutal week for bitcoin so far — and it’s only Tuesday.
About half a trillion dollars of value of evaporated off the entire cryptocurrency market since the start of the year as buyers are quickly becoming sellers trying to escape a bubble.
On January 7, the market capitalization or value of the cryptocurrency market hit an all-time high of $835.69 billion, according to Coinmarketcap.com. That total had dropped to $278.53 billion by the end of yesterday, marking a more than $557.1 billion drop since the record high.
Bitcoin took the hardest hit, dropping below $6K for the first since November. Bitcoin is still well above where it started 2017 — but is also far from its all time high price of nearly $20K per unit in December.
Bitcoin’s market cap has fallen $233.5 billion since that record high, according to CNBC.com, meaning it represents nearly half the value digital currency has lost in the last month.
Ethereum, which hit an all-time high of $1,432.88 in January, was trading around $577 yesterday — having fallen around 60 percent in the last few weeks.
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A few global factors seem to be pushing the great coin cashout: news reports that the PBOC will block all platforms related to cryptocurrency trading and the issuance of so-called initial coin offerings, India’s finance minister announcing he wants to see his country eliminate the use of digital currency, moves in the U.S. and U.K. to make it impossible for people to buy crypto on a credit card.
As of this morning, bitcoin was looking a bit healthier. Its price had managed to climb back above $6K to $6599.99.
Is it going to make it back above $10K?
With bitcoin, anything is possible, we suppose — but we won’t be holding our breath today.
