Bitcoin down 10% as brutal weekend sinks the market

Crypto markets plummeted over the weekend, with the price of Bitcoin dropping by almost 10% in the last 24 hours to hit a low of $7,774. One Bitcoin is now worth $7,890. 

The price movement came at the end of a week of gains for the cryptocurrency, which were wiped out in a stroke—along with all of Bitcoin’s gains for February, sending its market cap down to $143.6 billion. In all, Bitcoin’s price has dropped over 24% from its February high of $10,393. But more worrying is the lack of trading volume.

Bitcoin trading volume has completely dried up, research shows. Figures from Arcane Research (supplied by crypto exchange Luno) show that daily Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Bitcoin volume dropped to less than $90 million on Wednesday and Friday last week, the lowest daily volume in three months.

Open interest—the amount of current trades waiting to happen—has dropped to around $200 million from $350 million just two weeks earlier.

It's likely that investors are dealing with the haemorrhaging of the traditional markets, which saw the FTSE 100 index fall more than 8% and oil prices drop by 20% earlier today—the worst day since the financial crisis.

Other cryptocurrencies haven’t been spared the bloodletting, with Ethereum crashing by 11% to its current value of $203, Litecoin dropping by nearly 14% to hit $50.14, and XRP losing nine percent to hit $0.21. 

It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that the Fear & Greed Index has crashed along with the price, and is now down to 17, a rating of “Extreme Fear” that hasn’t been seen since December 2019. But despite his faithful mantra, not even this will convince billionaire investor Warren Buffett to get involved.