Bitcoin has now dropped below $10,000 as of today. The cryptocurrency is now worth just over half of its peak value. According to CoinDesk, Bitcoin opened at $11,348, and has dropped over $1,600 to hit a new low at $9,199.59. Even though it fell to that point, it’s recovered slightly and is currently trading at $10,129.96 at the time of this writing.
Speaking about other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Cardano, Ripple, and Litecoin, they have also seen deep losses of between 30 percent to 40 percent, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
Bitcoin grew a lot in 2017 and had a spectacular year. It started at around $800 and has steadily gained value. It touched an all-time high of $19,783 on December 17th and has been steadily declining since. More and more investors poured money into the hype of Bitcoin, with someone people even taking out mortgages to fund in Bitcoin for the investment. We have no immediate reason as to why there was a dip today, bitcoin has been experiencing falls over the past week.
One of the main reasons as to why Bitcoin (rather all of cryptocurrency) took a hit because Bitconnect, a platform for virtual currencies, announced that it’s shutting down its exchange platform because of bad press, DDoS attacks, and two cease and desist letters sent to them. Not to mention that Bitconnect has also been accused of being a Ponzi scheme.