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Bitcoin slumps 14% as pullback from record gathers pace

April 19, 2021 9:58 am

[Source: Reuters]

Bitcoin, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, fell as much as 14% to $51,541 on Sunday, reversing most of the big gains it made over the past week.

Bitcoin was last trading down 10% at $53,991 as of 1320 GMT, a whopping $12,000 below record highs set on Wednesday. Smaller rival Ether , the coin linked to the ethereum blockchain network, dropped 10% to $2,101.

Data website CoinMarketCap cited a blackout in China’s Xinjiang region, which reportedly powers a lot of bitcoin mining, for the selloff.

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Luke Sully, CEO at digital asset treasury specialist Ledgermatic, said in an email that people “may have sold on the news of the power outage in China and not the impact it actually had on the network”.

Hash rate refers to the volatility index that measures the processing capacity of the entire Bitcoin network, and it determines the power required by miners to produce new Bitcoins.