Bitcoin price plunges back below $4,000

Christopher
David uses a Robocoin kiosk to sell bitcoins outside of the 500
Startups’ Bitcoinferance in Mountain View, Calif., Thursday,
March 20, 2014. The Robocoin kiosk is owned by Coinage and will
be moved to a semi-permanent location after the
conference.
AP/Jeff
Chiu)

• Bitcoin
  was back below the $4,000 level Friday morning.
• The sell-off has “largely been mirroring” what is going
  on in the stock market recently, according to an
  analyst.
• Bitcoin was down 80% from its all-time high.
• Watch
  bitcoin trade live.

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Bitcoin
was hammered back below the $4,000 level early Friday. 

The biggest cryptocurrency by market value fell as much as 7.55%
to a low of $3,867. It was lower for a second straight session,
and has all but wiped out Wednesday’s gain of more than 10% — its
biggest
daily advance since April. 

Bitcoin peers XRP
(-5.56%), ethereum
(-3.2%), bitcoin
cash (-3.8%), and litecoin
(-5.97%) were also lower.

“The crypto markets have largely been mirroring what we’ve been
seeing from equities lately,” said Mati Greenspan, senior market
analyst at eToro. “It seems
that investors are simply more averse to risk than they have been
over the last few years. This is likely the result of monetary
tightening by global central banks.” 

It has been a difficult year for bitcoin investors, who last year
saw prices skyrocket by more than 2,000% to nearly $20,000 a
coin. Bitcoin topped out in December and have been in a downward
spiral ever since.

Prices had been stuck in a range between $6,000 and $8,000 since
the middle of May, but the cryptocurrencty came under significant
pressure in the middle of November. That’s when technical selling
pushed bitcoin’s price down to a low of $3,522, its weakest since
September 2017 and down more than 80% from its peak.

“For bitcoin, we’ve now seen a bounce off the first support level
of $3,500,” Greenspan said. “We could end up testing this level
again over the weekend.”

He added: “The key level of support resides at $3,000 per coin.
This psychological level played a significant role in the bull
run of 2017 and so will be watched closely in the coming days.”

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