If the bitcoin price drops below the $6,000 level and that holds, this could be a sign of an even deeper sell-off. So far, this has not happened as of 15:15 UTC the price of bitcoin had risen above the $7,000 level at about $7,035 and the trend appears up for now.
Bitcoin price has big drop
Over the past week, the bitcoin price has had a huge 25 percent drop from a seven day high of $8,995.50 according to figures from CoinMarketCap. As mentioned the price reached a low of $6,630 yesterday.
The bitcoin price opened Saturday morning at $6,844.32 and was up so far about 3.18 percent on the day showing a significant recovery so far. Of course the price is quite volatile. You can always check the present price at CoinDesk.
Since the start of 2018, bitcoin’s price has dropped over fifty percent. Less than four months ago the price had been approaching $20,000.
Reasons why the price may have dropped
There has been stepped up regulation of cryptocurrencies in both Europe and Asia.
In Japan two exchanges closed down this week after coming under increasing scrutiny from the Japanese financial services watchdog. The two trading platforms, Mr. Exchange and Tokyo Gateway failed to secure a license from Japan’s Financial Services Agency.
Stephen Innes, head of Asia-Pacific trading at Oanda brokerage said that the regulatory clampdown in Japan was a massive negative for the crypto currency market. Innes also noted that new rules in Europe limit the amount that investors can borrow to trade cryptocurrencies. This might also affect markets negatively.
According to CryptoCompare almost half of recent global trading in bitcoin was carried out in Japanese yen.
Last year, Japan officially recognized bitcoin and began to license exchanges. However, after an over $500 million dollar heist from an exchange last January the government has stepped up scrutiny of the exchanges.
Another negative factor is the announcement by Twitter that it would stop running ads tied to cryptocurrencies. Facebook and Google have announced similar bans and this includes ads for initial coin offerings (ICOs).
Other cryptocurrencies such as ethereum, next to bitcoin the biggest crypto coin by market cap, has suffered a similar pattern of having a significant drop and then regaining some ground so far today.
