Bitcoin prices fell sharply amid the global sell-off of stocks.
Luke MacGregor | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Bitcoin briefly fell below $ 30,000 on Thursday as the cryptocurrency continued to slide from record levels.
The digital currency fell 17% to $ 29,246.77 and deleted around $ 100 billion from the market, according to CoinDesk. Since then, losses on Friday have decreased slightly, climbing back above $ 30,000 after trading below that level for over an hour.
Bitcoin was last trading 3% at a price of $ 31,668. It’s down more than 12% this week and is now down about 25% since it peaked at $ 41,940 earlier this month.
The recent slump, which has come for no clear reason, underscores the volatility of a currency that has become a popular investment for day traders in recent years, despite having limited use in the real world. Bitcoin rose over 300% in 2020 and closed the year just over $ 29,000.
Ether, the digital currency, which ranks second in overall value after Bitcoin, fell even further on Thursday, falling 22% to $ 1,053.80. It has since made up for some of its losses, according to CoinDesk, up 3% at a price of $ 1,204 but still 16% below its high earlier this week. Ether rose 471% over the past year.
President Joe Biden elected Gary Gensler, former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and former banker of Goldman Sachs, as the next chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Gensler started teaching cryptocurrencies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018.
However, Biden’s election of Treasury Secretary, former Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen, is a cryptoseptic who warned earlier this week that the government may need to “restrict” the use of virtual currency to prevent illegal activity.
– CNBC’s Ryan Browne contributed to this report.
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