Major cryptocurrencies plummeted early Tuesday as investors took some steam from a rally that drove digital assets to staggering prices.
Bitcoin’s price plummeted about 14 percent to $ 46,605.79 after a nightly drop of $ 44,964.49, CoinDesk data shows, marking the largest daily drop in a month.
Dogecoin, the meme-inspired cryptocurrency that has become an online cult favorite, recently dropped more than 20 percent to around 4.4 cents. And Ether, second only to bitcoin in terms of market value, was down nearly 19 percent to $ 1,455.56.
The sell-off caused the total value of the cryptocurrency market to drop by about 16 percent to nearly $ 1.4 trillion, just days after it hit all records, according to Coinmarketcap.com.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk – one of crypto’s most prominent funders – appeared to be taking the plunge this weekend with a tweet stating that bitcoin and ether prices “seem high,” even though his electric car maker has $ 1 . 5 billion in the former currency. .
Markets were also shocked Monday by skeptical remarks from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who called bitcoin “extremely inefficient” and “highly speculative”.
“People have to beware that it can be extremely volatile and I am concerned about potential losses investors could suffer,” Yellen reportedly said at a conference.
Tuesday’s fall underscored volatility in cryptocurrencies just a week after bitcoin first soared above USD 50,000.
Crypto prices have soared in recent months as a growing number of institutional investors and large companies such as Tesla and Mastercard began to treat digital coins as more mainstream investment assets.
But skeptics have argued that these kinds of wild price swings can be an obstacle to the wider adoption of cryptocurrency.
“The types of meetings we’ve seen are not sustainable and just invite withdrawals like this,” Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at OANDA, told Reuters.
With Post Wires