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Bitcoin has fallen to a significant new low in the current bear market.
Early on Saturday morning, Bitcoin dropped below $20,000, according to data from CoinMarketCap—a dreaded milestone seen as a crucial support level for the top cryptocurrency. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at around $19,460, down over 6% on the day.
In prior bear markets, Bitcoin had never before fallen below the prior bull run's peak.
Although BTC breaching $20,000 is a largely symbolic barrier, experts believe a drop below this level could trigger a wave of "forced liquidations", in which large-scale crypto investors will be forced to close positions on BTC derivatives products because they now possess insufficient collateral. Such events would likely only further drive down the price of Bitcoin, triggering further liquidations.
At the time of writing, Ethereum, remains above its key support level of $1,000, albeit fractionally so; it currently trades at around $1,020.
The total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies stands at around $853 billion, down over 5% in the last 24 hours.
According to Arthur Hayes, former CEO of BitMEX, $20,000 and $1,000 represent price levels for BTC and ETH, respectively, that if breached, would trigger “massive sell pressure.” And now Bitcoin is there.
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If these levels break, $20k $BTC & $1k $ETH, we can expect massive sell pressure in the spot markets as dealers hedge themselves. We can also expect that there will be some otc dealers and that will be unable to hedge properly and might go belly up.
Although crypto markets have not impressed all year, the current crash began in earnest early last month when major coins fell in correlation with the stock market. In a matter of days, Terra’s stablecoin UST and native token LUNA both imploded, erasing some $40 billion in value.
As the cascading effects of every new leg lower in the crypto market continue to play out, it remains unclear when BTC, ETH, and the broader crypto market will hit the bottom.
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