Investing.com – Bitcoin continued shedding value on Sunday, adding to losses after having entered a bear market on Thursday.
On a day of extreme volatility, typical for the largest digital currency by market cap, Bitcoin plummeted 14.5%, or $2,036, on the Bitfinex exchange to trade at $12,000.00 by 6:54AM ET (11:54GMT). Prices have ranged from $14,706 to $11,777 in the last 24 hours.
The most popular cryptocurrency –which trades 24 hours a day, 7 days a week- hit a record high of $19,891.00 only last Sunday in the run up to CME’s launch of Bitcoin Futures.
Bitcoin officially entered a bear market, technically defined as a 20% plunge, on Thursday, with most market experts commenting that the alternative currency was long overdue for a correction.
Since that Sunday top, the alternative currency is currently down around 39.6% at the time of writing. However, Bitcoin has still rallied around 1,100% from just under $1,000 at the beginning of the year and maintains gains of nearly 21% in December alone.
Unlike recently, cryptocurrency rivals were not benefitting from the selloff in the leading coin. Some observers suggested that investors were cashing in on stellar gains across the board as they closed their books ahead of the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.
At 6:57AM ET (11:57GMT), Ethereum, the second most valuable cryptocurrency by market cap after bitcoin, plummeted 13.2% to $582.50 and is off around 11.73% in the last 7 days.
After recovering on Saturday, Bitcoin-offshoot Bitcoin Cash is declining once again on Sunday, plunging 15.03% to $2451.6. Despite the slide, the currency that was the result of the “fork” from the world’s largest digital currency on August 1 in a move that was designed to be able to process transactions more quickly at a lower cost held onto weekly gains of around 45%.
Similarly, Ripple - designed for banks and global money transfers and with one of the more affordable price tags- fell 13.51% to $0.86 after having just having passed the historical milestone of $1 on Thursday. Still, the “low-cost” bitcoin alternative held gains in the last seven days of 25.1%.