Bitcoin suffers its biggest drop in 20 months, hits its lowest level since June
Bitcoin suffered its biggest drop in 20 months Tuesday, plunging to its lowest price since June as a drop below the major support level of $9,000 triggered a wave of selling.
Starting 24 hours ago at around $9,700, bitcoin dropped to a low of $8,019.73 at 3:45 p.m. EDT according to Coindesk’s bitcoin price tracker although on some exchanges it dropped briefly below $8,000. Bitcoin’s price did recover, trading at $8,713.57 as of 10:15 p.m., but it was still trading down 10.3% over the last 24 hours.
As is usual with bitcoin price movements, speculation as to why varied widely. Some reports suggested that the price drop may be the result of the disappointing debut of the Bakkt bitcoin futures on the New York Stock Exchange and other exchanges on Sunday. Expectations were high for Bakkt’s debut, with some analysts claiming that it might be a game-changer.
Unlike previous bitcoin futures offerings, Bakkt’s contracts are settled in bitcoin versus the U.S. dollar with the theory going that they would stimulate demand for bitcoin itself. The theory was only as good as institutional investors embracing the product, which they didn’t on the first day, when only 73 contracts were sold. The figures improved somewhat on Day Two. Bakkt said 166 contracts had changed hands, but the figure is still significantly below original expectations.
“The disappointing Bakkt opening signals to the crypto community that institutions are less ready to invest in bitcoin at scale than was supposed, which means the price was probably too high and due for a correction,” said Alex Mashinsky, chief executive officer of Celsius Network. “What we’ve just seen is short-sellers and momentum traders piling on to make things worse, and now here we are back at support.”
Another likely trigger for bitcoin’s drop was a margin call at Bitmex. Coindesk reported that bitcoin’s price slid $1,000 in 30 minutes after the exchange made the margin call. A margin call is triggered when an investor’s equity, as a percentage of the total market value of the given security, in this case bitcoin, falls below a certain percentage requirement. The margin lender requests that the investor deposit additional money or securities to cover the maintenance margin.
Bitcoin’s price drop led to a fall across all cryptocurrency markets. Of the top cryptocurrencies, Ethereum dropped 13.3%, Ripple XRP 9.4%, Bitcoin Cash 20% and Litecoin 13.2%.
As usual, the direction of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is anyone’s guess. Bitcoin is now down by more than 40% since its yearly high at the end of June, but it is still significantly up from 12-month lows of just above $3,000 in December.
Image: quoteinspector/Flickr
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