Bitcoin Dives Under USD 10,000, Crypto Market Down 10%

The most popular cryptocurrency, bitcoin, dropped by almost USD 1,000 on Tuesday, breaking the USD 10,000 level and almost reaching USD 9,600, while the whole market capitalization dropped by more than 10%.

At pixel time (17:49 UTC), bitcoin trades at c. USD 9,641, and is down by almost 9% in the past 24 hours and by more than 23% in the past week. The recent drop trimmed its monthly gains to almost 6%. This is the second time bitcoin dips below USD 10,000 in July. Yesterday, it was under this level for c. 10 minutes.

Other coins from the top 10 by market capitalization lost 7%-17% of their value today. Ether is down by 14%, while XRP decreased by 7%.

Bitcoin price chart:

The whole market capitalization dropped by 10%, to USD 258 billion. However, bitcoin dominance, or the percentage of the total market capitalization, stayed above 66%.

Among the top 100 coins only five tokens are in green (SOLVE, WAVES, RIF, MXM, AOA) and are registering up to 6% gains.

The recent sell-off coincided with the Libra hearing before the Senate Banking Committee earlier today.

“Libra is essentially slammed in the Senate,” Lennon Sweeting, head trader at Coinsquare Capital Markets Ltd., told Reuters. “It’s just headline-driven volatility.”

“The criticisms of Google, Facebook and all cryptocurrencies have unsettled investors,” Marcus Swanepoel, CEO of cryptocurrency firm Luno, told The Independent.