Bitcoin (BTC) experienced a major setback yesterday, as it wasn’t able to build upon the solid gains it had enjoyed over the weekend. The digital coin tumbled early in the session, losing over $200 in just a couple of hours. Bitcoin’s problems intensified further towards the end of the session, when its price suffered an even steeper drop. Having spent the better part of the session trading around the $8,500 mark, BTC plunged in late trading to a close of $8,208.99, according to data from digital currency tracker Coinmarketcap.
Bitcoin’s decline didn’t stop there, as the coin dropped below the $8,000 in the opening hours of the session. The coin’s subsequent attempts to bounce back has been largely unsuccessful, even though the coin rose to around $8,075 shortly after the initial dip. In recent trading BTC hit an 11-day low of $7,865.36 and is currently trading around the $7,960 mark.
A healthy pull-back?
The drop comes just days after Bitcoin closed the month of May with a 60% monthly gain. This turn of events seems to suggest that the bulls may be losing on the market. However, according to Timothy Tam, co-founder of cryptocurrency research firm CoinFi, the pull-back is actually a good thing.
“[The crypto rally] just got a little bit extended, this is a healthy retracement,” Tam, who is also chief executive officer of the Hong Kong-based firm, said, as quoted by Fortune. “There’s quite a lot of volume going through, this is normal Bitcoin volatility. At the end of the day it still doesn’t take a lot of money to move these markets compared with traditional markets.”
Tam also pointed to headwinds from the wider sell-off in global markets as being another factor adding to the selling pressure.
In today’s trading, the Bitcoin price stood at $7,964.18, as of 10:00 BST. The digital coin has lost 6.4% of its value in the past 24 hours. Its total market capitalisation currently stands at $141.3 billion, which represents 55.8% of the combined value of all digital currencies.
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