Top line
Bitcoin’s price fell to a four-month low on Monday, resuming a multi-week slide in the cryptocurrency that saw prices of other major tokens fall amid uncertainty over impending sales by the German government and creditors of failed cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox.
Bitcoin prices fell again on Monday.
Highlights
Bitcoin’s price fell more than 6% early Monday morning before paring its losses to trade around $55,500 as of 3:15 a.m. EST, still down 4% from the same time the previous day.
It’s the lowest price for the world’s largest digital asset in months and a drop of about $18,000 from an all-time high of just under $74,000 in March, a loss of about a fifth.
Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization after Bitcoin, followed a similar trajectory, sliding more than 7% before recovering to trade around $2,900 as of 3:15 a.m. ET, down 4% on the day.
The same path was also followed by Binance’s BNB, Solana, Ripple’s XRP, Dogecoin and Cardano’s Ada — the next largest cryptocurrencies, excluding stablecoins pegged to traditional currencies like Tether and USDC — with falls of between 9% and 11% echoing losses of between 2.5% and 7% as of 3:15 a.m.
Overall, the total cryptocurrency market had lost about $20 billion in value over the course of a day as of 3 a.m. EST, down about 2% from the previous day.
Why is Bitcoin falling and the cryptocurrency market crashing?
Bitcoin’s plunge Monday threatens to continue a string of dismal weeks of decline for the popular cryptocurrency, which has been sliding since its record highs in March. The drop comes amid waning interest in cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs), uncertainty over monetary policy and fears that Tokyo’s bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox could trigger a crash as it makes good on its promise to repay creditors. The exchange was once one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges but filed for bankruptcy a decade ago after hackers stole most of its crypto assets between 2011 and 2014. Bitcoin is trading about 10 times more expensive Monday than when the exchange filed for bankruptcy, and today the bitcoin haul is reportedly worth more than $58 billion, according to CNBC. The exchange managed to recover some of the funds after declaring bankruptcy, with the tokens worth around $9 billion today, and markets have responded to what is expected to be a massive Bitcoin selloff, with creditors cashing out at a much higher price than when they lost the crypto tokens. Bitcoin accounts for more than half of the total value of the cryptocurrency market, and its fortunes tend to be mirrored by the market as a whole and by smaller crypto tokens.
Tangent
Mt. Gox isn’t the only factor driving the cryptocurrency market downturn. The German government is also making waves by hastily selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin for fiat currency. Berlin has been sending its cryptocurrency reserves to exchanges like Coinbase, Bitstamp, and Kraken since June, as the European government unloads and liquidates assets it seized from various criminal groups. These transfers have heightened concerns about major market selloffs, and according to Arkham Intelligence, Germany still holds about $2.2 billion worth of Bitcoin.
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News Source : www.forbes.com
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