Bitcoin Drops Below $40,000, Over 40% off All-Time High

Bitcoin’s bloody week continues. 

Bitcoin in Freefall 

Bitcoin is plummeting.

The leading crypto briefly dipped as low as $36,350 Wednesday afternoon after days of sell-offs. It’s Bitcoin’s first drop below $40,000 since February. 

Bitcoin is currently trading at $38,782, around 40% off its all-time high price. The asset hit a price of $64,804 last month but has been static relative to the rest of the market since then. 

This week, Bitcoin has suffered a significant decline, leading to selloffs across the whole market. It plunged Sunday night in response to a series of tweets from Elon Musk. “Bitcoin is actually highly centralized,” the Tesla and SpaceX founder tweeted, days after announcing that Tesla would halt Bitcoin payments due to the environmental impact of Proof-of-Work. 

The sell pressure has continued over the last few days, and some signs suggest it could last a while longer. Responding to the market’s downturn, the Deribit exchange has added $25,000 BTC call options with a May 28 expiry date. 

We just added the $BTC 25K strike in the 28 MAY 21 Expiry!

— Deribit (@DeribitExchange) May 19, 2021

It’s not only Bitcoin that’s in the red: ETH is down over 35% this week, trading at $2,674 at the time of writing. BNB is down 41.5%. Key DeFi tokens such as AAVE and SNX have also dropped in the last 24 hours. 

The total crypto market cap is currently valued at $1.82 trillion. That’s over 25% off its all-time high. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ETH, AAVE, SNX, and several other cryptocurrencies. 

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