Bitcoin, the largest of the decentralized virtual currencies, fell below $5,000 per unit on Monday, the first since October 2017 when its value began to take off.
The world's largest cryptocurrency has lead in the wing. In decline in recent days, the value of Bitcoin fell this Monday below the symbolic bar of $5,000 per unit. This is a first since October 2017 when its value began to take off.
The Bitcoin fell to $4,958.36 around 17:35 Paris time from $5,451.72 last Friday, a drop of about 10%.
After months when its value was relatively stable at around $6,400, the virtual currency began to stumble last week to reach this low of less than $5,000. Losses now reach 21% in one week and 62% since the beginning of 2018.
Cryptocurrency began its rapid rise almost a year ago. Bitcoin had indeed reached $10,000 at the end of November 2017 before becoming familiar with $20,000 around Christmas. A surge mainly thanks to individual investors.
As a result, a bitcoin futures market was created in December on the Chicago Stock Exchange allowing investors to bet on the currency downward.
Bitcoin, an "evil emanation" of the financial crisis
But after a strong start to the year for bitcoin and other crypto currencies, confidence gradually eroded throughout 2018.
It is difficult to find the reason for this sudden drop in interest, but some analysts had recently pointed to a decline in interest in active sulphur dioxide, while trading volumes in October fell to a one-year low, according to the trade journal Diar.
Some commentators had also mentioned the dispute within the bitcoin cash community, another cryptomonnaise that is intended to be the rival of bitcoin, which resulted in a split into two new virtual currencies last Thursday.
The Bitcoin was only worth a few cents when it was launched in February 2009 by one or more computer scientists hiding under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. By 2017, it had made the headlines, rising from about $1,000 in January to almost $20,000 by the end of the year.
The emergence of this phenomenon, described as a "bubble" by many officials, has confused many institutions that have marked their distance from it.
The latest example, last Thursday, the French economist Benoît Coeuré, a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank (ECB), compared Bitcoin to a kind of "evil emanation" of the financial crisis, while acknowledging "an extremely intelligent idea" at the outset.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator