Bitcoin fell by as much as 10% in trading on Monday, capping losses that have totaled 20% during the past week and wiped off $1 trillion in the crypto market’s total value since November.
As of Monday morning, bitcoin was trading at around 7.5% lower than on Friday. The price of one bitcoin was just over $34,000 — a drop of more than 45% from early November, when it reached an all-time high of $67,582.
Ethereum, which at around the same time was trading at a high of more than $4,800 per coin, was down to $2,243 on Monday. Its value has fallen by some 30% in the past week.
On its own, bitcoin has lost more than $600 billion in market value. The crypto market as a whole has suffered losses exceeding $1 trillion – the second largest decline in the brief history of the digital currencies.
Crypto-adjacent stocks are also taking a hit from the market collapse. Coinbase, the digital trading app, was down more than 9% in early morning activity on Wall Street.
In early November, Coinbase hit a record high of $357 per share. On Monday, the share price was less than half of that at $174 — the lowest it has been since it started trading publicly in the spring of last year.
The cryptocurrency market has lost more than $1 trillion in aggregate value over the past two months – dragging down crypto-focused stocks like Coinbase. Getty ImagesOther crypto-focused stocks like digital coin-mining firms Riot Blockchain and Marathon Digital were also hit with losses.
Shares of Riot Blockchain fell by more than 10% after the opening bell while Marathon Digital’s stock price dropped by more than 8%.
The selloff of cryptocurrency is mirroring that of other assets like stocks as investors gird for the Federal Reserve’s withdrawal of stimulus from the markets.
Bitcoin has seen more than $600 billion wiped off its value in the past three months. Getty ImagesWhile bitcoin’s value plunged, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite entered correction territory this week as the expected withdrawal of pandemic-era Fed support and rising inflation roiled US markets.
“Crypto is reacting to the same kind of dynamics that are weighing on risk-assets globally,” Stephane Ouellette, the CEO of FRNT Financial, told Economic Times.
“Unfortunately for some of the mature projects like BTC, there is so much cross-correlation within the crypto asset class it’s almost a certainty that it falls, at least temporarily in a broader alt-coin valuation contraction.”
