Bitcoin price: Billions wiped off crypto market in brutal week

Bit­coin slid about 19 per cent in the last sev­en days and eight per cent in the last 24 hours. It was worth $35,291 ($A49,126) just after 8am Sat­ur­day AEDT, accord­ing to CoinMarketCap.

It is a huge fall from an all-time high of near­ly US$69,000 (A$96,000) in November.

Oth­er major coins ethereum, Binance’s BNB, solana, car­dano and XRP have also tak­en a hit this week.

Ethereum, the sec­ond-largest cryp­tocur­ren­cy after bit­coin, slid about 27 per cent in the last sev­en days and 10 per cent in the last 24 hours.

As of Fri­day the cryp­to price crash had seen around $1.2 tril­lion wiped from the com­bined cryp­to mar­ket after it hit an all-time high of $3 tril­lion in Novem­ber, accord­ing to Forbes.

Experts in the field believe val­ues have dropped as a result of the US Fed­er­al Reserve rais­ing rates this year, as well as height­ened pres­sure from Chi­na and Rus­sia to sti­fle dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy trad­ing in their countries.

Ana­lysts have warned the price of bit­coin could fall even fur­ther this year.

“The mass mar­ket­ing of bit­coin reminds us of the activ­i­ty of stock­bro­kers in the run-up to the 1929 crash,” Paul Jack­son, who is US invest­ment com­pa­ny Invesco’s glob­al head of asset allo­ca­tion, wrote in a note this week, accord­ing to Busi­ness Insid­er.

“We think it is not too much of a stretch to imag­ine bit­coin falling below $30,000 this year,” Mr Jack­son said, adding he believes there’s at least a 30 per cent chance of it happening.

Crack­down on cryptocurrencies

Rus­sia, the world’s third-largest cen­tre for bit­coin min­ing, pro­posed ban­ning the use and min­ing (the cre­ation) of cryp­tocur­ren­cies this week.

Accord­ing to a report released by the country’s cen­tral bank on Thurs­day local time, cryp­tocur­ren­cy min­ing and trad­ing goes against Russia’s green agen­da and can be used in mon­ey laun­der­ing or to finance terrorism.

The report esti­mat­ed the cryp­tocur­ren­cy indus­try gen­er­at­ed $7 bil­lion a year in Russia.

The world’s largest cen­tre for bit­coin min­ing is the Unit­ed States, fol­lowed by Kazakhstan.

Chi­na was once the glob­al pow­er­house of bit­coin min­ing but the coun­try banned it last year, which caused bit­coin min­ers to relo­cate to Kaza­khstan, in search of cheap energy.

Civ­il unrest Kaza­khstan ear­li­er this month saw a fifth of the world’s bit­coin min­ing knocked out.

Vio­lent protests across Kaza­khstan were trig­gered by surg­ing fuel prices and turned into more gen­er­al protests against the government.

Pres­i­dent Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ordered the nation’s tele­com provider to stop inter­net ser­vice, and min­ing bit­coin is impos­si­ble with­out the internet.