Has the Bitcoin bubble burst? That’s the question a lot of people have been asking recently, and with renewed vigor today, given that the virtual currency has taken a massive tumble – indeed, it has just dipped below the $10,000 (£7,250) mark, almost half of the peak it reached last month.
Around mid-December, Bitcoin hit highs of around $19,500 (£14,130), but as Neowin reports, it has just briefly dipped below $10,000, before recovering slightly to stand a little under $10,300 at the time of writing.
The cryptocurrency has seen a meteoric rise lately, and only last October, it was worth around $6,000 (£4,350). Go back to September 2017, and it was ‘only’ worth just over $4,000 (£2,900).
So given that it increased almost fivefold in terms of value in around two and a half months through to mid-December, it’s hardly surprising that we’re seeing some major volatility on the down-slope.
Spooky stories
As for reasons behind the big drop, investors in the virtual currency have been spooked by stories emanating from Asia, including rumors that South Korea might ban the trading of cryptocurrency – although this won’t happen, the country has since clarified, at least not in the near future – and that China could also look towards a ban.
And of course the fall in value itself has provoked sell-offs as folks get more nervous watching the Bitcoin diminish.
Bitcoin isn’t the only cryptocurrency to be getting hammered – this is happening across the board, or at least with most of the popular virtual currencies. For example, Ethereum has also dropped to around the $900 (£650) mark, when at the weekend it stood at well over $1,400 (£1,000).
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