Only bitcoin is able to reach the peaks and hit the bottom in a matter of days. However, the cryptocurrency, which was close to $ 20,000 Monday, fell below $ 13,000 Friday late afternoon, before rising to around 14,445 dollars around 23 hours, French time. That's a 35% drop in five days. The fall was particularly brutal between Thursday and Friday, where the price of bitcoin lost $ 4,000 in a few hours. Coinbase, one of the main platforms for the purchase and sale of cryptocurrency, has even announced the temporary suspension of trade because of too many connections.
Several events
Bitcoin is what is called a cryptocurrency, a virtual currency. It can be bought and resold via online platforms. The particularity of bitcoin is that its price is independent of any central bank: all transactions are verified by the "nodes" of the network, that is to say the computers of cryptocurrency users. Bitcoin has been the subject of particularly intense speculation in recent months. A year ago, the virtual currency was worth less than a thousand dollars per unit, an increase of at least 1300% in twelve months. It has attracted the interest of Internet users and businesses around the world, as well as the concerns of many authorities.
This is not the first crash of bitcoin, whose price is particularly volatile. Nevertheless, this one is particularly violent. This week, several events destabilized its course: the piracy then the closing of a big platform of exchange in South Korea, as well as the suspension of the quotation of another company specialized in bitcoin, Crypto, by the policeman American financial market. Finally, Coinbase employees are suspected of insider trading on the exchange of "bitcoin cash", an alternative to bitcoin.