It seems like it can't keep going up!
After an incredible rally in the early days of December, which saw the price of Bitcoin almost double from $10,240 to $19,994, the popular digital currency is losing value, and fast.
The price has fallen by a quarter in the last 24 hours alone, and Bitcoin is currently trading at $12,874, according to CoinMarketCap.
As is usually the case in the cryptocurrency world, most other currencies are following the same path: Ethereum is down 27.4 percent, Bitcoin Cash is down 36.3 percent, Ripple is down 6.2 percent, and Litecoin is down 29 percent, over the past 24 hours.
There is no obvious explanation for the price drop. There has been a lot of news about Bitcoin lately, including Russia’s announcement of new regulation of cryptocurrency exchanges, but none of it is extremely negative. One possible explanation could be the rise in the price of Bitcoin Cash, which was recently added to Coinbase and is being touted by several prominent people in the cryptocurrency community as a better alternative to Bitcoin. But regardless of the trigger, the current drop is likely a much-needed correction in an “overheated” market.
The correction removed about $179 billion from the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies, which is now $471 billion.
If all of this sounds dramatic, remember that Bitcoin's price is still up more than 30% since December 1st and 1,300% since the beginning of the year. The cryptocurrency is extremely volatile, and sudden price drops of this magnitude have happened before and are likely to happen again.
