Bitcoin drops under $50k mark, on track for biggest fall since February
23 Apr 2021
Bitcoin has dropped under the $50,000 psychological support line to the lowest level in 48 days.
According to Bitstamp exchange data, Bitcoin’s price declined from around $54,900 to $51,500 on Thursday, before another market sell-off to $48,300.
At around 10am London time on Friday, Bitcoin edged down 8% over the past 24 hours at $48,687, according to Coin Metrics data.
This is the first time Bitcoin – the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap – traded under $50,000 since the beginning of March, CNBC reports.
In addition, Ethereum fell over 12% to $2,211, whilst the fifth-largest cryptocurrency, XRP plummeted 19%.
This wiped out over $200 billion of value from the cryptocurrency market as a whole, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
“The market has run up quite a bit overall, and it’s probably cooling off before the next leg up,” Vijay Ayyar, head of business development at cryptocurrency exchange Luno, told CNBC.
Moreover, Ki Young Ju, CEO of South Korea-based blockchain analytics firm CryptoQuant, told CoinDesk: “On-chain data suggests we’re still in a long-term bull market. In the short-term, we might have a correction and going sideways in a broad range since the market is over-heated among retail investors.”
Bitcoin is on track to record its biggest weekly drop since February, when prices dropped 21%, Coindesk reports, before a steep recovery and hitting record highs of close to $64,900.