Bitcoin fell to as low as $3,519.94 on the Bitstamp platform, after earlier falling to a 14-month trough of $3,462,57, and was last down 12.6%
New York: Bitcoin prices plunged more than 12% on Monday, extending falls in recent weeks in a broad-based selloff in cryptocurrencies as sentiment sours. Several factors have accelerated the downturn, analysts said, including increased US regulatory scrutiny and a delay to January 2019 of the widely-anticipated launch of bitcoin futures by Bakkt, Intercontinental Exchange’s crypto platform.
“These factors coupled with lukewarm network fundamentals and reports of falling adoption of crypto as a tool for services such as payments, have led to strong selling pressure against a lack of buying resistance—to a point of apparent capitulation,” said Aditya Das, analyst at Brave New Coin, a crypto asset market data company.
Bitcoin fell to as low as $3,519.94 on the Bitstamp platform, after earlier falling to a 14-month trough of $3,462,57, and was last down 12.6%. It has lost 74% of its value so far this year, after hitting nearly $20,000 in December last year.
Other digital currencies also fell sharply, with Ethereum’s ether down 7% at $106.69 and Ripple’s XRP falling 5.6% to 34 US cents.
Cryptocurrency market capitalisation plummeted to $122.3 billion on Monday, down 85% from its peak of nearly $800 billion hit in early January this year.
Mainstream investors have stayed clear of bitcoin, with concerns over scant regulatory oversight and undeveloped market infrastructure compounded by frequent swings in price.
Analysts said the US Securities and Exchange Commission was partly to blame for the recent selloff, with the delay in its approval of new bitcoin instruments, as well as for its investigations of initial coin offerings and crypto exchanges.