Bitcoin Breaks Below $50K as Market Sell-Off Continues

Bitcoin has fallen below the $50,000 psychological support line, hitting its lowest point in 48 days.

At around 17:00 UTC on Thursday, bitcoin's BTC$73,741.83 price fell from around $54,900 to $51,500 before the markets inflicted another sell-off to $48,300, according to Bitstamp exchange data. Prices are currently hovering around $49,200, representing an 8% drop or loss of about $4,300 over the previous 24-hours, according to CoinDesk's bitcoin price page.

"On-chain data suggests we're still in a long-term bull market," Ki Young Ju, CEO of South Korea-based blockchain analytics firm CryptoQuant, told CoinDesk. "In the short term, we might have a correction and going sideways in a broad range since the market is over-heated among retail investors."

Bitcoin is on track to close out its biggest weekly drop since February when prices fell 21% before making a sharp recovery and breaking to all-time highs near $64,900.

A loss of the 100-point daily moving average at around $49,400 may open up steeper losses to around $46,000, according to technical analysis theory.

Other cryptocurrencies are also experiencing sharp sells, with XRP and ether both down 13% and 7% respectively and binance coin is down 5.8%. Indeed, almost all of the assets in the CoinDesk 20 – the 20 cryptocurrencies making up the lion's share of the crypto market at eight significant exchanges – have fallen in price over the last 24 hours.

See also: Bitcoin Price Decline Deepens, Heads for Worst Week Since February