Cryptocurrencies are not immune to the gyrations rocking global markets, plunging along with a broad range of assets on Monday in the wake of the collapse in crude oil prices.<\/p>\n
Bitcoin, the largest digital currency, dropped as much as 12% from Friday\u2019s close after extending a sell-off begun over the weekend, and was trading just above $8,000 as of 11:44 a.m. in Hong Kong. That\u2019s the biggest one-day slump since September, according to consolidated pricing compiled by Bloomberg.<\/p>\n
The wider Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index fell as much as 16% as major cryptocurrencies Ether, XRP and Litecoin also retreated.<\/p>\n
Asia equities plunged with sovereign bond yields, while currencies swung wildly on Monday after Brent oil prices crashed more than 30%, the second-largest decline on record after the plunge during the Gulf War in 1991.<\/p>\n
\u201cMacro dominoes are falling to create a chain of negative sentiment, which is in turn triggering a sell-off of crypto,\u201d said Jehan Chu, managing partner with blockchain investment and advisory firm Kenetic Capital. \u201cBitcoin has always been subject to short-term sometimes-violent volatility, but today\u2019s drop is nothing we haven\u2019t seen before\u201d and it could move lower still, he said.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also a bullish argument, according to Chu — that the weakness in the global economy, oil\u2019s collapse and the coronavirus outbreak are helping to make the case for investing in digital assets.<\/p>\n
Even with the latest sell-off, Bitcoin is still up 12% this year, with much debate within the industry on the potential impact on pricing of the upcoming \u201chalvening\u201d — a scheduled reduction in the mining rate of the coin designed to combat inflation.<\/p>\n
\u201cA similarly rapid turnaround and appreciation is equally anticipated on the way to higher levels leading into the halvening,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Cryptocurrencies are not immune to the gyrations rocking global markets, plunging along with a broad range of assets on Monday in the wake of the collapse in crude oil prices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":228735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44696],"tags":[187,191],"class_list":["post-341881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-bitcoin","tag-cryptocurrency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341881"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341881\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}