Bitcoin’s Saturday performance has seen $500 chopped off the coin’s value, with 6.8% losses over twenty-four hours, and a very concentrated dip occurring this afternoon at 13:00 UTC, when just over 5% of BTC’s value disappeared.
Sudden Price Drop
This afternoon’s plunge came suddenly, with the coin price sinking from $7,427 to $7,030 in the space of just over three hours. The majority of the losses had been incurred by around 15:30 UTC, just over thirty minutes ago at the time of writing. The price has since begin to level off, but volumes are currently down on this time yesterday and the movement doesn’t look to be over.Looking at Bitcoin’s numbers for the week, it has been a story of stepped declines since July 31st.
As you can see from the chart below, a new dip has occurred every two days since then, with today’s price marking a return to levels not seen since mid-July, just before BTC went on its mini-bull run of recent days.
Based on the current price, Bitcoin is down 14% for the week, and yet based on the monthly opening price of $6,710 the coin is still up 5% over thirty days. Ultimately, the bulk of July’s gains have been wiped out, and those who thought BTC was free and clear will now be tightening their belts for the long haul.
Wall Street Strikes Fear?
Throughout the day news has started to circulate of the negative predictions forecasted by some big hitters in New York. Goldman Sachs in particular published an mid-year economic outlook report, in the pages of which they said they expect Bitcoin to lose a lot more of its value over the year, and that we were still nowhere near the lows which are yet to come.
“Our view that cryptocurrencies would not retain value in their current incarnation remains intact and, in fact, has been borne out much sooner than we expected. We expect further declines in the future given our view that these cryptocurrencies do not fulfill any of the three traditional roles of a currency: they are neither a medium of exchange, nor a unit of measurement, nor a store of value.
”The story has been picked up by various news outlets throughout the day. Now we’re seeing accompanying reports from Yahoo Finance compounding the negativity, with statements from a NYSE trader declaring Bitcoin unsuitable for the functions which it claims to serve. In the video piece, Alan Valdes said:
“How do you protect your Bitcoin? These wallets seems very iffy at best. If someone hacks into them, it’s like losing cash, you are out. So, I think Bitcoin [has] a long way to go for the average person to get involved. Maybe in some emerging markets you’ll see it take hold with that currency could be a little stronger, it might work. But I think here for trade, I mean, we had at $20,000. Will it get there again? Anything is possible. But I’m not so sure.”Rough times for Bitcoin… with even rougher ahead?
Featured image courtesy of Shutterstock.
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