THE cryptocurrency market is down over the last 24 hours as the whole industry continues to endure turbulent price movements after nearly a year of record highs.
The latest price retrace comes less than a week after Bitcoin reached a new all-time high of $67,000.
Data suggests the market drop is partly fuelled by long-term holders taking some profits, which usually happens when Bitcoin hits a new all-time high.
Any sudden dip in price of more than a couple of per cent can trigger panic selling from investors, however, severe dips also attract new buyers.
When has Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market crashed before?Cryptocurrency investors have had a rocky ride since Bitcoin launched in 2009. From daily volatility, where double-digit inclines and declines are not uncommon to multiple scams and fraudsters, and an absence of regulation further impacting the ecosystems volatility.
Bitcoin’s price increased from $1 in April to a peak of $32 in June.
The increase of 3,200 per cent was followed by a crash and Bitcoin’s price bottomed out at $2 in November 2011.
In 2012 the price had increased from $4.80 in May to $13.20 by August.
Bitcoin started 2013 trading at $13.40 and increased rapidly to $220 by the beginning of April.
The increased was followed by a rapid decline with Bitcoin trading at $70 by mid-April.
In early October 2013, the cryptocurrency was trading at $123 and by December, had surged to $1,156 before falling to $760 three days later.
The price slumped to $315 at the beginning of 2015 but by 2017 the price of Bitcoin was around $1,000.
Following a small decline in the first two months, the price increased from $975.70 on March 25 to $20,089 on December 17.
In January 2018, the price dropped to $9,200 before retracing further to $3,200 by December.
June 2019 saw a resurgence in price and trading volume with the price of Bitcoin surpassing $10,000 before falling back to $7,112.73 by December.
Bitcoin started 2020 at $7,200 and increased to $18,353 by November as the pandemic caused economic turbulence. The price reached just under $24,000 in December 2020 – an increase of 224% from the start of that year.
The bull run continued into 2021 and surpassed $40,000 in January 2021. Bitcoin reached a peak of over $64,000 on April 14, 2021 before the price retraced by 50 per cent, dropping to $32,000 after Elon Musk and Tesla stopped customers being able to pay in cryptocurrency and Chinese regulators announced they were banning banks and payment firms from using cryptocurrencies.
August 2021 saw another bull run, with prices reaching $50,000, before drawing back to $42,500 after investors started selling their cryptocurrencies following China banning digital tokens such as Bitcoin.