The multi-day cryptocurrency selloff continued on Wednesday, with several notable coins—including bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash—once again experiencing sharp declines. Experienced crypto traders are no strangers to sudden drops, but the scope and severity of this particular January crash has many concerned.
According to CoinMarketCap.com, the price of bitcoin has tumbled nearly 16% over the past 24 hours. Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash have all dropped more than 20% within that same timeframe, while Ripple has crashed more than 25%.
Wednesday’s losses add to what has been a terrible week for the vast majority of the world’s cryptocurrencies. After reaching a weekly high on Saturday, the 1,442 cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap have since shed about $330 billion worth of total market capitalization.
The crash becomes even more maddening when looking at the price action of bitcoin specifically. At its lowest point on Wednesday morning, bitcoin’s total market cap was about $158 billion—a far cry from the $252 billion it was at as recently as last week.
Bitcoin has bounced off that weekly low a bit, but there was a moment this morning where the world’s most popular cryptocurrency was down about $95 billion on the week. Having trouble visualizing just how big of a drop that is? $95 billion is about equal to the current market cap of Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) .
Proponents of bitcoin will quickly point out that the “January crash” is not a new phenomenon. Indeed, over the last several years, bitcoin has tumbled significantly from new highs in the month of January—in direct contrast to the New Year bullishness we typically see on the stock market.
But with the significant surge in bitcoin over the past year, this year’s January crash comes at a moment when the stakes have never been higher.
Nevertheless, it is worth noting that Wednesday’s intraday low for total cryptocurrency market cap is relatively in-line with what the crypto market was trading at just 23 days ago. As promised, the cryptocurrency market continues to witness significant fluctuations.
New traders might be getting burned if this is their first time experiencing it, but we continue to see that anyone that presumes to know where bitcoin is heading next is typically overconfident.
Want more analysis from this author? Make sure to follow @Ryan_McQueeney on Twitter!
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