UPDATED 23:01 EDT / MAY 19 2019

BLOCKCHAIN

Wild bitcoin roller coaster ride sees price plunge 21% before recovering

Bitcoin went on a wild roller coaster ride involving billions of dollars in value over the weekend, dropping more than $1,300 at one point until mostly recovering as of Sunday evening.

The current ride dates back to bitcoin breaking through $6,000 on May 9, surging again through $7,500 before investors started to take profits May 12. Bitcoin then rose again, breaking through $8,000 for the first time May 14. That was followed by a small drop before it peaked at $8,323.99 on May 16, its highest level since in July.

The fall that followed was steep, with investors virtually screaming along the way. Bitcoin bottomed out at $7,056.82 on Saturday before the May 19 recovery.

Over three days, bitcoin lost 21.4%, a loss of about $5 billion, one of the largest short-term losses in bitcoin’s history, but those who decided to hold tight have seen most of that loss disappear since then.

The cause for the selloff may have been a large bitcoin trader taking profits, with Forbes reporting that it seemed to have been triggered by a large volume sale on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange earlier in the week, causing panic selling.

Other transactions also added to the confusion. AMBCrypto noted that two significant transactions of 5,000 bitcoins, worth about $40 million, were reported by WhaleAlert, an online cryptocurrency-transaction tracker that tracks these so-called “bitcoin whales.”

Roller coaster ride aside, many analysts are predicting even better for bitcoin’s price ahead, with some interesting new theories coming for the fore. One is that a flood of investment into bitcoin could come from investors looking for alternative investment options as fears of a global recession rise thanks to the U.S.-China trade war.

Michael Hartnett, the chief investment strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch told Business Insider that investors are afraid of losing their savings in a possible recession and are seeking higher returns to shore up their wealth.

Harnett said he doesn’t believe investors are flooding into bitcoin as a safe haven but instead feel forced to adopt a more “greedy” trading strategy. That move has allegedly seen investors aggressively trading cryptocurrency, emerging markets and corporate securities in the hopes of capitalizing on the next bull run.

Whatever the reason, bitcoin continues to fluctuate widely in price. As of 10:50 p.m. EDT, bitcoin was trading at $7,940.11, down from $8,291.10 at 7:15 p.m.

Image: mikemacmarketing/Flickr

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