Bitcoin Support Weakens As Price Drops Below $1,000

Bitcoin prices fell below $1,000 this morning as support for the digital currency waned.

Prices had hit a low of $969.35 by the time of reporting, having started the session at an average of $1,029.95, CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (BPI) data indicates.

At press time, the average price of bitcoin was $977, a fall of over 5% for the session. Since the start of trading, markets had peaked at an average of $1,032.34.

Bitcoin’s price also dipped below the $1,000 mark over the weekend, hitting a low of roughly $947, before recovering the following day. Prices revived to above $1,115 yesterday, but have again since declined.

It’s not immediately clear what’s driving this market dip. One factor could be lingering concerns over the prospects of a bitcoin hard fork, which could result in two wholly separate blockchains.

Still, sell orders now outnumber buy orders, data from BFXdata shows, with sells accounting for 53% of trades in the last hour and 55% of trades in the last 24 hours on the Bitfinex platform.

The market move stands in contrast with developments from earlier this month.

As of mid-March, the bitcoin price had stayed above $1,000 for over a month, its longest ever period above that level.

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