Bitcoin Price Crashes, Altcoins Turn Red

In a sudden move on Wednesday afternoon (UTC time), bitcoin price dropped by 5% in one hour, reaching the level last seen in May 2019, while almost all top 100 coins also turned red.

At pixel time (13:14 UTC), bitcoin trades at c. USD 7,612 and is down by 8% in the past 24 hours and by 5% in the past week.

BTC price chart:

Other coins from the top 10 by market capitalization crashed by 3%-6% in the past hour and by 5%-11% in the past 24 hours.

The total market capitalization dropped by 7%, to USD 210 billion.

As reported yesterday, the crypto market was already bracing for another volatility storm.

“The difference between Bitcoin’s upper and lower band in the Trading Envelope indicator is at its narrowest since mid-September,” Bloomberg reported, adding that “a similar narrowing last month preceded a drop of more than 12% for Bitcoin on Sept. 24.” That’s not all, as the article finds that the world’s most popular coin “closed below its opening price in six of the last seven trading sessions,” and when this pattern happened in mid-September, BTC lost about 20% in one week.

“As it becomes more and more obvious that the Libra thing is not going to take off — it’s going to be a long time before it becomes an important part of anything Facebook’s doing — as that becomes more obvious, the volatility will pick up again,” Matt Maley, equity strategist at Miller Tabak + Co. was quoted as saying. “This issue with what’s going on with Libra and Facebook is a definite headwind and it’s not going to go away.” The CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerburg, will testify before the U.S. Congress today.

“At times when volumes are low, it makes liquidity thin as well, which in turn can make the market susceptible to wild price swings,” Mati Greenspan, Senior Market Analyst at eToro, warned yesterday.

First reactions