Bitcoin loses a fifth
The price of the virtual currency slumped nearly 20 percent on Friday amid expanding losses that set Bitcoin on track for its worst week since 2013 after peaking close to $20,000 last Sunday.
Bitcoin plunged below $13,000 (€10,970) on Friday, trading as low as $12,500 in Britain, after opening at $15,600. The crash of almost 20 percent means the cryptocurrency has lost around a third of its value in just five days.
Other major digital currencies also tumbled, according to OnChainFX which tracks the digital assets. Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was 26 percent lower at $641.65 while “Bitcoin cash” fell 38 per cent.
Charles Hayter, founder and chief of industry website Cryprocompare in London, described the downturn as a change in “emotional sentiment” that had prompted the “manic upward swing by the herd” before.
“With the end of the year in sight a lot of investors will be taking profits and saying thank you very much and closing their books for the holiday period,” he said.
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Bitcoin, which is biggest and best-known cryptocurrency, had seen a staggering twentyfold increase since the start of the year, climbing from less than $1,000 to as high as $19,666 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange on Sunday and to over $20,000 on other exchanges.
As a result of the crash on Friday, the total estimated value of the crypto market fell to as low as $480 billion, according to industry website Coinmarketcap, having neared $650 billion just a day earlier.
uhe/mm (Reuters, dpa)