The price of bitcoin crashed nearly 50% from a day ago to below $4,000 today as cryptocurrency markets suffered even worse than equity markets from the coronavirus-related economic turmoil sweeping the globe.

Bitcoin started the day at above $7,000, down from its peak of more than $10,000 less than a month ago. Coronavirus concerns started to affect bitcoin at the end of February, with the price dropping to around $8,500. The price stayed around the $8,000 range through to March 10 before heading into the high $7,000 range and then crashing today. Bitcoin last traded below $4,000 in March 2019.

The consensus is that the crash is coronavirus-related, with the most common theory being that major investors are cashing out to cover losses in traditional equities markets.

Denis Vinokourov, head of research for London-based digital asset firm Bequant, told Forbes as bitcoin started to crash earlier today that the market has declined “sharply” in an environment characterized worries about coronavirus, U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest travel restrictions and panic-driven selling. He added that the desire of investors to sell off their holdings triggered “a liquidity crunch as the cost of capital spiked up across trading venues.”

Once again proving that assumptions that bitcoin is a safe-haven asset are rubbish, Matthew Bidd, co-founder of Stack, told Business Insider that “the short-term outlook for bitcoin remains bearish as investors are clearly not looking at bitcoin as a safe-haven asset.” Notably, other presumably safe assets also dropped today, including 10-year U.S. Treasury Bond and gold, suggesting that the overall market was in pure panic.

The contagion was nearly across the board, with Ethereum down 47% at 10:30 p.m. EDT, Ripple XRP down 42.7%, Bitcoin Cash 46%, Litecoin 45% and Bitcoin SV 52%. The only exceptions were stablecoins tied to U.S. dollar reserves: Tether rose 1.8% and USD Coin rose 1.74%.

Bitcoin was trading at $4,734.37 as of 10:35 p.m. EDT after trading as low as $3,950.30 at 10.15 p.m., but the market remains volatile.

Image: Marco Verch/Flickr