Bitcoin (BTC) started Thursday (September 26) at $8,431. Sadly, by 15:50 UTC, the BTC price had dropped below the key $8,000 support level to $7,932.
This week has not been kind to Bitcoin (and crypto in general). First, we had the panic selling on Tuesday (September 24), a day during which the BTC price dropped by as much as $1500. BTC-USD started that day around the $9,700 mark and finished it around the $8,700 level.
Most market observers blamed this drop on either a disappointing Bitcoin futures launch by Bakkt and/or an (as yet) unexplained estimated 30% drop in hash rate of the Bitcoin network.
In the early part of today, it looked like the crypto markets were going to have a good day, more so for altcoins than Bitcoin, but at around 08:00 UTC, BTC-USD was trading at $8,381, up 0.63% in the preceding 24-hour period.
Unfortunately, around 13:15 UTC, things took a nasty turn for Bitcoin because that’s when BTC-USD started dropping like a stone, going from $8,419 to $7,822, i.e. a fall of over 7% in just a little over three hours.
At press time (17:10 UTC), BTC-USD has recovered somewhat, but it is still trading below $8,000:
Here is what Dovey Wan, a Co-Founder of Primitive Ventures, had to say about the Bitcoin price dropping below $8K:
Tho daily hasheate chart is volatile and highly depending on statistical expectation, if $BTC price drops to sub $7500, there will be a significant impact on S9 miners
S9 is now on the verge of shutting down, and whoever gets into mining post May on S9 can hardly get break even
— Dovey Wan 🗝 🦖 (@DoveyWan) September 26, 2019
As for BitMEX, the world’s largest crypto derivatives exchange (by trading volume), in the past 24-hour period, over $113 million of Bitcoin (XBTUSD) long contracts have been liquidated.
Featured Image Credit: Photo via Pexels.com
