Bitcoin tries to rebound after dramatic weekend selloff
It has been a turbulent week for Bitcoin — and it’s only Monday. After the cryptocurrency suffered a flash crash on Saturday — plummeting some 14% — it is trying to regain some of the lost ground.
Bitcoin rose a modest 0.1% against the US dollar early Monday, to more than $56,421 per coin.
The weekend plunge was a rather dramatic end to a months-long rally that was topped off by Coinbase’s enormous IPO last week, which valued the cyrpto exchange at nearly $100 billion. Coinbase shares fell 3.7% in the first minutes of Monday trading.
Bitcoin had tumbled because of “some countries like Turkey making noise about banning Bitcoin as a payment methodology and also talk of further scrutiny by the US Treasury,” said Brad Bechtel, global head of FX at Jefferies.
The crypto market is also getting more crowded: China is creating a digital yuan and is toying with the idea of rolling out the currency at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Meanwhile, the Bank of England announced the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency as well as a task force to explore its uses.
“Big Tech is also developing their own versions of cryptocurrencies,” said analysts at Action Economics in a note to clients. “All this represents significant future competition for the likes of bitcoin.”
Elsewhere in the market, stocks are flashing red following last week’s string of record highs for the Dow and the S&P 500.
The Dow opened 0.2%, or 50 points, lower, while the S&P slipped 0.2%. The Nasdaq Composite opened down 0.5%.
