By: Steve Dellar | 12-23-2017 | News
Photo credit: Promeartstudio | Dreamstime.com

Bitcoin Slump Wipes Away $187 Billion

In a correction that hit the entire cryptocurrency market this week, some $187 billion in value was wiped away. Yesterday was the strongest drop, with Bitcoin and Ethereum both getting hit with a 30% drop at a certain point. Over the week, both currencies have seen their value getting halved.

Some investors who got into the investing frenzy in the past three weeks, when Bitcoin broke through the $10k mark for the first time, might actually already have made a loss now. For those who’ve been in the game for longer, this is nothing new.

31-year-old Justin Zhu, who like most of his millennial peers in Asia and Oceania, has invested in Bitcoin, says he’s seen it all before: “I was there during the 2013 crash, so unless it drops more than 95 percent again I’m not really fussed.”

“I actually completely forgot about my bitcoin until someone told me it went over $US1000 again earlier this year.”

“A correction is pretty healthy overall, I think,” he said. “There are just a lot of basic issues like transfer times and] fees that will hopefully be fixed, along with the civil war situation between bitcoin and bitcoin cash that needs to be addressed first.”

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Losses in major cryptocurrency markets (&gt;$1bn) now above 30% in the last 24 hours (Data via <a href="https://twitter.com/CoinMarketCap?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CoinMarketCap</a>) <a href="https://t.co/Rk2RI3J1ZX">pic.twitter.com/Rk2RI3J1ZX</a></p>&mdash; CoinDesk (@coindesk) <a href="https://twitter.com/coindesk/status/944220724482502657?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 22, 2017</a></blockquote>

<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Some of the exchange platforms stopped trading on Friday, due to the wild swings. Coinbase, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, suspended trading on Friday, as well as two other exchanges.

A notice on Coinbase read: “Due to today’s high traffic, buys and sells may be intermittently offline.”

“We’re working on restoring full availability as soon as possible and will be posting status updates.”

It is now widely assumed that this week’s stump was due to investors cashing out on their yearly profits in the cryptocurrency market.

Source:

http://www.news.com.au/finance/money/investing/bitcoin-loses-nearly-half-its-value-in-187-billion-wipeout-as-crypto-correction-continues/news-story/fc40b9f1b11d07011c0b95dc7659bfa1

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1 Comment/s
Anonymous No. 14574 2017-12-23 : 12:46

A lot of Asians woke up a lot poorer this morning

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