Bitcoin fell below $7,600 in some trades as its heavy slide continued into Friday.
The charts for cryptocurrency market capitalizations are a sea of red right now. In the 24 hours ending at 6:45 a.m. ET Friday, Bitcoin fell over 17%, Ethereum fell more than 32%, Ripple was down 38%, and Bitcoin Cash was down over 27%.
All in all, that’s $115 billion off cryptocurrency market caps in one day, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
At the time of writing, Coinbase’s GDAX exchange was seeing Bitcoin trades taking place around $7,990. Comparing that to the nearly $20,000 that Bitcoin almost reached in early December may be a little unfair, as that was a very brief moment, but the virtual currency subsequently spent a lot of time hovering around the $15,000 mark. Those days seem long gone now.
To recap the possible reasons for the current collapse:
- India has become the latest country to seriously talk about a regulatory crackdown on bitcoin.
- There are fears that bitcoin’s lofty valuation may have been artificially propped up.
- Facebook has banned ads that promote cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings.
Whatever the cause, it seems a Bitcoin panic is in full swing. The question now is how low it will go before the selloff stops.
