At one point, the world's largest cryptocurrency handed back all of the gains it had notched up since the start of the year.
Bitcoin suffered another stomach-churning plunge in the early hours of Friday — taking it as low as $28,953.37 at one point.
The latest correction was significant for two reasons: It caused BTC to lose support at the crucial $30,000 level, and it effectively meant that the world’s biggest cryptocurrency handed back all of the gains made since the start of January.
Gloom quickly spread through the altcoin markets. While BTC is down by about 10% over the past 24 hours, ETH has performed even worse — losing 12% of its value. This dragged the No. 2 coin below the psychologically important threshold of $1,200 — taking it even further away from the record heights of $1,440 that were seen a few short days ago. That said, ETH has fallen by just 1.16% over the past seven days.
Of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap, it was Polkadot that was least affected by the sell-offs. DOT’s price has tumbled by just 3.11% at the time of writing — and as a result of this, it remains 19% higher than this time last week.
The total market cap of all cryptocurrencies has taken a hammering over the past 24 hours, once again losing the prized milestone of $1 trillion. When BTC was at its lowest point early on Friday, this stood at an eye-watering $836 billion — although it did manage to bounce back as the morning went on.
As reported by CoinMarketCap Academy, some crypto pundits now believe that Bitcoin is going to continue to cool — and the record price of $42,000 set earlier this month may be as high as things go in 2021. Are we set for a painful reprise of 2018, when BTC tumbled by a jaw-dropping 80% after hitting highs of $20,089?
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