The year 2018 has been a terrible one for cryptocurrencies, which have been on a race to the bottom that shows no real sign of abating.
Bitcoin headed for another weekly slump on Friday, with the largest cryptocurrency heading closer to $3 000 – a level unseen since September last year.
It turns out that cryptocurrency enthusiasts were committed well beyond the HODL rallying call that urged them to hold on during this year’s digital-asset market collapse.
It seems like every asset bubble has a famous anecdote of someone claiming, right at the top, that a crash is impossible.
Nearly 170 years before the invention of bitcoin, the journalist Charles Mackay noted the way whole communities could “fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit”.
Cryptocurrencies continued their slide with a fresh bout of losses on Friday after the SEC dashed hopes that a bitcoin exchange-traded fund would appear before the end of this year.
One of the consequences of the recent rout in bitcoin is well underway. And it’s likely to have a profound effect on the leading cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin is headed for the biggest gain since April, providing some welcome relief to battered cryptocurrency investors – but it may be too soon to call a bottom.
The virtual currency’s behaviour since the start of the year doesn’t just look like a bubble bursting; it looks more like a currency under attack
Bitcoin miners hit hard by the cryptocurrency’s crash may be throwing in the towel.