Bitcoin price in free fall as crypto market crashes

Hundreds of billions wiped from cryptocurrency market as Ethereum, Solana and Cardano all suffer

Bitcoin is experiencing its worst price crash since 2022, falling more than 10 per cent on Monday morning to hit a six month low.

The world’s leading cryptocurrency dropped below $50,000 (£39,000) for the first time since February before recovering to $52,000 at the time of writing.

The sudden plummet comes after one of the most positive periods in bitcoin’s history, having rallied to a record-breaking $74,000 in March and remained close to that level until this weekend.

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Other leading cryptocurrencies have suffered even greater losses, with Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB), Cardano (ADA) and Solana (SOL) all falling by around 15 per cent over the last 24 hours.

The overall crypto market has fallen below $2 trillion to $1.85 trillion, having decreased by 13 per cent over the last day. Combined with losses over the previous week, bitcoin has lost nearly a quarter of its value in just seven days.

The latest price crash comes amid a wider downturn in financial markets, partly triggered by fears of a looming global recession.

The sudden crypto collapse took some market analysts by surprise, with the previous consensus among many experts being that bitcoin could rally to another new all-time high this year following a successful halving and the inflow of billions of dollars worth of investment from newly approved bitcoin spot exchange traded funds (ETFs).

The bitcoin halving, which took place in April, saw rewards for mining the cryptocurrency fall by half. The quadrennial event, which is hardcoded into bitcoin’s underlying digital infrastructure, is designed to be an anti-inflationary measure and typically precedes record-breaking price runs.

“The cryptocurrency market has been hit by a sell-off, the likes of which haven’t been seen in a long time,” Alex Kuptsikevich, a senior market analyst at FxPro, told The Independent.

“We would not have been surprised to see such a sell-off before the halving due to the last takeout of buyers before the start of active growth. There is nothing unusual about such a downward amplitude in a bear market either, but not now, when the four-year cyclical pattern should work on the bulls’ side.”