Bitcoin’s volatility is at full display for the past 15 hours or so. The digital currency, which hit its 17-month high of $13,880 hit on Wednesday, has spiraled down by over 19% and is currently trading at $10,879.67.
The double-digit pullback has come after a near vertical price rise from $7,500 to $13,800 in the 17 days to June 26. And by the looks of it, this is looking more of a technical correction in the over-hype that was created this month. And this correction comes a day after printing the biggest one-day trading range since January 2018.
The sudden downturn started at around 4:30 p.m. New York time Wednesday, draining more than $1,800 in value within about 10 minutes. Moments later, prominent cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Inc. reported an outage on its consumer site, which was resolved in under an hour. The aftermath has continued today as well, with the currency down over 19%.
However, despite the pullback, BTC is still up 183 percent on a quarter-to-date basis, its best three-month performance since the final quarter of 2017.
Bitcoin has had a rather lulled year in 2018. There was not much happening at the crypto end, and multiple bans across the globe by federal governments did not help the cause.
However, things took a turn, most notably starting June this year, when Facebook came out with Libra. This, once again, turned heads and investment interests towards cryptocurrencies, in hope that entry of a major player like Facebook could help turn things around in the digital currency market. And while it did turn around things, the market is now witnessing massive correction.
“Regardless of how successful Libra will be, the one thing that it’s been successful in doing is bringing attention back to Bitcoin,” said Zennon Kapron to Bloomberg. Kapron is the managing director of financial technology consulting firm Kapronasia and author of a book on Bitcoin in China.
