Investing.com – Bitcoin continued to fall on Wednesday, as the world’s largest digital currency now tumbled to its lowest level since February.
Bitcoin was trading at $6,553.6 by 12:19AM ET (04:19GMT) on the Bitfinex exchange, down 4.1% over the previous 24 hours.
Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, fell 5.9% at $496.2 on the Bitfinex exchange.
Ripple’s XRP token was down 5.4% to $0.55449 on the Poloniex exchange.
Meanwhile, Litecoin lost 5.9% to $99.34.
Bitcoin has now slid more than 50% for the year, down from a record high of $19,511 it hit in December.
“I don’t think this is driven on any particular news, just the general downtrend after the 2017 run,” Kyle Samani, managing partner at Austin, Texas-based crypto hedge fund Multicoin Capital, said in an email. “A lot of people who bought at $9,000 in April are realizing that they’re not going to break even anytime soon, and are instead trying to get out.”
Cryptocurrency prices were under pressure since the beginning of the week, following news that some of South Korea-based exchange Coinrail’s virtual currency appeared to have been stolen by hackers, and reports that Apple has now banned all on-device crypto mining apps.
Meanwhile, state-run newspaper People’s Daily cited an official at the Shanghai branch of the central bank and reported on June 7 that the nation’s cleanup of initial coin offerings and Bitcoin exchanges has almost been completed.