Bitcoin falls US$9,000 from newly minted all-time high
After doubling from US$20,000 in less than 3 weeks, Bitcoin drops nearly US$10,000 in a matter of days.
- Bitcoin has shed a quarter of its value in just 24 hours.
- Altcoins are also in freefall, with only 2 coins in the top 100 showing gains.
- Elon Musk continues to tease markets with characteristically granular tweets about cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin is currently trading at US$34,902 down over 11% on the day's short-lived high of US$38,908 according to price data from Coingecko. Bitcoin was trading as low as US$30,608 in the past 24 hours, a loss of more than 25% from the newly minted all-time high of around US$42,000.
This represents the biggest single-day loss since March of 2020 when coronavirus news triggered panic selling across global markets. Given Bitcoin's current prominence within the market, the rest of the overall market cap of cryptocurrencies has contracted by 22%, from US$1.1 trillion to as low as US$840 billion in just 24 hours.
Unsurprisingly the altcoin market is also in a tailspin, with the rout being lead by Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash all down by as much as 25% in the past 24 hours. Evidently traders are worried, with CoinGecko data showing a premium of a few cents on a range of stablecoins including DAI and USDT which suggests there is a rush to exit positions in favour of fiat-pegged coins.
Compounding the price dip for cryptocurrency markets has been a strengthening US dollar which has risen nearly 0.5% against the Euro and 0.63% against the Aussie dollar over the 24-hour period. In terms of Satoshi, Bitcoin's smallest increment, the USD has gained one-third, buying 32 Satoshi – well up from the 24 Satoshi that 1 US dollar was buying on 8 January.
The S&P 500 index is down 0.55% on the previous close and the NASDAQ is reeling by 1.15%.
Elon Musk lighting up the crypto world one tweet at a time
Elon Musk has gone viral again with another tweet about Bitcoin. Musk was replying to a comment by Ben Mezrich stating that he would never reject payment in Bitcoin in the future. Musk replied simply with "Me neither."
Me neither
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 9, 2021
Musk is labelled as the unofficial CEO of Dogecoin, a self-proclaimed parody coin, which soared by double-digits in December 2020 after Musk referenced the coin in a tweet. Musk, ever the prankster, has "Former CEO of Dogecoin" in his Twitter bio.
Musk nearly broke the Internet again in December of last year when he asked Michael Saylor if it would be possible to change the Tesla accounts over to Bitcoin. Michael Saylor is CEO of MicroStrategy whose Bitcoin buying strategy has seen its investments in Bitcoin grow into the hundreds of millions of dollars with the latest bull run.
Interested in cryptocurrency? Learn more about the basics with our beginner's guide to Bitcoin, keep your crypto safe with a hardware wallet and dive deeper with our simple guide to DeFi.
Disclosure: The author may own a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing
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