What goes up, must come down.
Bitcoin went up — all the way up, making it over the $20K per unit mark.
Now bitcoin is coming down, as yesterday saw the world’s best known cryptocurrency plummet 25 percent to less than $13,000.
Bitcoin wasn’t alone in the hurt locker — digital currency had a rough day nearly across the board yesterday. At the day’s beginning there were 31 digital currencies with a market cap of $1 billion or better — by day’s end, 29 were reporting losses. Ether, the second-biggest digital currency by market value, dropped 26 percent over the past 24 hours; litecoin was down 32 percent.
Volatility is not new to bitcoin, which started December at $10,000 a unit — but the big drop-off seems to have caught the ecosystem off guard. All in all, Bitcoin is net down 30 percent over the last four days — which marks the 5th time Bitcoin has found itself in a price plunge this year.
In the prior four instances, it took Bitcoin an average of 38 days to hit a new high, according to Charlie Bilello, director of research at Pension Partners, an investment-advisory firm in New York.
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Bitcoin futures prices on Cboe Global Markets Inc. and CME Group saw a 10 percent decline as of Friday and were pricing bitcoin as going down in price in Q1 2018 — a state known in futures markets as “backwardation,” and a potentially bearish sign.
However, digital currency did show strength in the form of Ripple – the third largest cryptocoin by value. It has missed the pricing drop and seen its value rise 7 percent in the last 24 hours.
