Bitcoin Drops $1,000 In Value Amid Market Sell-Off

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has once again come into contact with a greater crypto market sell-off slashing its price by more than $1,000.

On May. 17 at 2:00 UTC, BTC$105,247.40 dropped by 16.7 percent to find a bid below $7,000 at $6,600 before rising once more on the back of high volatility, moving above $7,000 to where it currently sits at $7,300, according to CoinMarketCap and CoinDesk data.

In the last 24 hours, bitcoin’s market capitalization also dropped more than $10 billion over a 24-hour period. However, BTC remains positive over a 7-day period, up $14 billion on the week amid high volatility and market disagreements on its true price.

The reasons for the sell-off could be attributed to large sell-orders liquidating numerous stop-loss positions and invoking general panic amongst traders.

Indeed a sell-order on the Bitstamp exchange for example, of 3,645 BTC or $26.8 million in US dollar terms, was executed at around 02:00 UTC on May 17 and could have been one of the major causes for a dip below $7,000.

It’s no small secret that when bitcoin moves in value, the rest of the crypto markets may also do so as seen by a large capitulation in daily prices which are currently down between 11 and 22 percent amongst the top 100 at CoinMarketCap.

Ether ETH$3,841.26, BCH$470.68 and LTC$90.33 all suffered similar losses losing between 8 and 16 percent in value while stellar (XLM), XRP and ADA$0.6294 were the hardest hit in the top 10 by market capitalization, dropping 16.3, 16.5, 16.7 percent respectively.

The total crypto market capitalization also took a hit dropping more than $29 billion over the last 24-hours hinting at investor uncertainty as they transition to the sidelines to await bitcoin's next move.

Disclosure: The author holds USDT at the time of writing.

Bitcoin Image via Shutterstock