Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple coins - largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation.
The price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency – Bitcoin – has now crashed more than 10% in the last 24 hours as China further tightened the noose on crypto mining.
At the time of filing this copy, Bitcoin was trading at US$31,584.56, down 11.22% in last 24 hours. The Bitcoin is now trading at a price less than half of its peak value touched in April 2021.
With this, the market valuation of Bitcoin crashed US$590.06 billion – way lower than US$1 trillion it touched a few months back before coming under the bears’ clutch.
Today’s crash has pushed the Bitcoin annual returns to a single-digit mark, as the year-to-date returns of Bitcoin now stand at 9.88%.
Other cryptocurrencies were also in deep red, as the Chinese obsession with banning crypto mining continued.
Bitcoin tumbled almost 11% on Monday while other digital coins like Ether dropped as much as 16.24%, falling below $2,000 for the first time in about a month. Tesla boss Elon Musk’s favourite cryptocurrency Dogecoin also witnessed a meltdown – crashing 37.48% to trade around $0.17.
Chinese mines power nearly four-fifths of the global cryptocurrency trade even as domestic trading has been prohibited since 2017. However, in recent months many provinces have asked the mines to close as Beijing is keeping a hawk’s eye on the industry.
Authorities in the Sichuan province are said to have ordered the closure of 26 mines last week, according to a notice widely circulated on Chinese social media.