UPDATED 23:00 EDT / FEBRUARY 22 2018

EMERGING TECH

Ending February’s bull run, bitcoin drops $2,000

Bitcoin’s bull run has come to an end.

Sellers drove the price of the cryptocurrency down over $2,000 in trading Thursday. Bitcoin broke $11,000 Feb. 19 as part of an upswing that started after it bottomed out at $6,363.97 on Feb. 5. It hit a peak of $11,711.03 on Tuesday before the price started to turn downward. Bitcoin dropped below $10,000 as of 7 a.m. EST, hitting $9.698.57 by 10:30 p.m.

Just as the reasons for its run from nearly $6,000 to $12,000 were a matter of speculation, so is its drop. But one site summed it up well in a headline: “Bitcoin is Dropping, and Experts Can’t Agree Why.”

Nick Kirk, quantitative developer and data scientist at Cypher Capital, told CNBC that there was no specific reason for Thursday’s decline, suggesting that “it’s profit-taking” and “a bit of resistance at the $10k to $11k price point.”

Suggesting profit-taking, Trevor Gerszt, chief executive officer of CoinIRA, told Inverse that “$10,000 is a plateau for Bitcoin only as long as profit-taking continues…. Investors who bought the dip nearly doubled their money when Bitcoin got close to $12,000, so a little bit of retrenchment was not unexpected. Once that’s over, we expect Bitcoin to continue its long-term price appreciation.”

Another theory is that negative news may be at least partially to blame for the drop in price, in the same way positive news drove the price increase. The arrest of Jon E. Montroll, the operator of a defunct bitcoin stock exchange called BitFunder earlier this week, gained widespread attention, and although his actions pertained to fraud in 2012-2013, it wasn’t a good look for the cryptocurrency world.

Berkshire Hathaway Vice-Chairman Charlie Monger was the latest billionaire investor to speak out again bitcoin, telling a shareholder meeting that bitcoin was “noxious poison,” that the current hype involving bitcoin is “totally asinine” and that the U.S. government should follow the lead of China in banning its exchange.

In what could be argued by some to be positive news but to most people screams massive government-sponsored scam, Venezuela announced a $4.9 billion presale of its own “Petro” cryptocurrency earlier in the week. That news was followed by President Nicolas Maduro ordering the country’s consular services, as well as several other services and gas stations, to accept any type of cryptocurrency — including bitcoin.

When despotic rulers of failing states are embracing bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, it arguably creates a perception issue.

Photo: Pexels

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