Bitcoin may have entered a bear market as the price of the cryptocurrency’s price continued to drop Wednesday to some of its lowest levels in six months.

The price of bitcoin dropped as low as $7.942.22 at 3:15 p.m. EDT, only slightly higher than the recent low Oct. 7 of $7,853.69, before recovering slightly to $7,985.55 at 11 p.m. EDT, still notably below the $8,000 mark.

Bitcoin spent 2018 plummeting from a price near $20,000 at the end of 2017 before finally bottoming just above $3,000 in December. After months sitting below $4,000, the price of bitcoin returned to form, peaking at $12,575.90 July 10 but, despite teasing $12,000 in August, it has headed down ever since.

The downward pressure started around Sept. 24 when bitcoin dropped below its then major support level of $9,000 and has failed to recover since.

Coindesk noted that bitcoin is now facing its strongest selling pressure since February and has the potential to drop below $7,750 in the near future. The Chaikin Money Flow index, which measures bitcoin prices and trading volumes, is currently sitting at -0.14, indicating either selling pressure or capital flight from the bitcoin market.

Online analysts are also predicting a bear market, at least in the short term:

$BTC daily update:

Still following the plan.
A lot of low time frame volatility shaking people out of their positions.
In contrast to that, the high time frames haven't really been that volatile.
Just slowly bleeding out.
Bulls need to close the daily above $8200 (black). pic.twitter.com/bfHTuzfg03

— DonAlt (@CryptoDonAlt) October 15, 2019

The fall in bitcoin was contagious, as all major altcoins are also falling in value, some worse than others.

Jeff Dorman, chief investment officer of asset manager Arca, told Forbes that today’s move lower is less about the magnitude and more about the “correlation and direction.”

“We’re hearing that the broad-based selling is being driven more by market makers and those that are short pushing the market lower, rather than driven by long unwinds or selling,” Dorman explained. “With volumes still quite low relative to this summer, shorts are incentivized to keep pushing prices lower until they hit resistance.”

Volume is a notable feature of the bear market. Data from Bitcoinity shows that the volume of bitcoin is currently sitting near its lowest level in six months, though slightly up from the second week of September.

That doesn’t explain the current drop in bitcoin alone, but decreasing trading levels do indicate a slide in demand and typically a demand slide correlates with falling prices.

Image: Marco Verch/Flickr