Bitcoin Plunges Below $20K for First Time Since December 2020; Ether Drops Below $1K
The continuing plunge in traditional financial markets and panic about crypto lending platforms sent Bitcoin into the teens for the first time in more than 18 months.
Jun 18, 2022 at 9:06 a.m. UTC:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/coindesk/5NKNA2OSGJARFLIK7FW3G7C4C4.jpg)
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Bitcoin (BTC) sank below $20,000 for the first time since December 2020, losing 9.5% in the past 24 hours. At time of publication, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap was changing hands around $18,984.1 after trading at a low of $18,739.50.
Ether (ETH), the second-largest crypto, also continued its decline, falling 9.78% to about $992 at time of publication.
The crypto panic – which began a few weeks ago with the Terra ecosystem collapse and then spread to the Celsius platform – has moved on to hedge fund Three Arrow Capital, which reportedly had its collateral liquidated by crypto lender BlockFi.
Checking traditional markets, U.S. stocks saw more massive selling on Thursday, with the Nasdaq tumbling 4.1% and the S&P 500 3.25% before a slight recovery on Friday. For the week, the Nasdaq and S&P are each lower by about 6%.
Amitoj Singh contributed to this report.
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Greg Ahlstrand was previously CoinDesk's Asia News Editor. Greg has no significant crypto holdings.
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James Rubin was CoinDesk's U.S. news editor based on the West Coast.