Huge sell-off crashes the price of Bitcoin below $10,000

A sudden surge in sell orders has dropped the price of Bitcoin (BTC) below $10,000. The price of Bitcoin fell to $9,700 before heading even further, down to $9,400.

At time of writing, the price is currently recovering a little, back up to $9,500 but the price action isn't over yet.

Other cryptocurrencies are also falling, with Ethereum (ETH) down to $230 and XRP at $0.20. OMG has also fallen five percent in the market drop, losing some of its gains it experience due to its Tether (USDT) integration.

Bitcoin only broke upwards through the $10,000 mark yesterday evening. It reached highs of $10,500 before falling back to $10,100 where it rested for most of today.

"Bitcoin doing bitcoin things again," tweeted analyst Joseph Young, having noticed the price drop.

"Welp. Looks like bitcoin didn’t fix this," added podcast host Udi Wertheimer.

When the price of Bitcoin broke up through $10,000, it liquidated a lot of traders who were shorting the cryptocurrency (betting the price would go down). According to Datamish, $135 million was liquidated on Bitcoin futures exchange BitMEX in the last 24 hours, likely during the spike.

However, as the price came down, many traders going long were also liquidated to the tune of $100 million. The price even dropped further on BitMEX—falling down to $8,600—making things worse.

Some traders jokingly blamed those who had said we will never see Bitcoin below $10,000 again. Just a few hours prior, crypto personality Hodlonaut (who invented the Bitcoin Lightning Torch) tweeted, "I don't usually make predictions. But this is too obvious not to call. We will never see Bitcoin below $10k again." He might regret that tweet.

This article has been updated with data on the liquidations, more tweets and further price updates.