Dec 22, 2017

Bitcoin's latest comedown

Illustration: Rebecca Zisser / Axios

Bitcoin had a wild day, dropping nearly $5,000 from its opening price before clawing back $3,500 of that decline by late afternoon.

Quick hits:

  • "[B]itcoin has lost about $110 billion of its total market value in less than a week, twice the market cap of Tesla Inc." [WSJ]
  • "Michael Novogratz, the former macro manager who's turned into one of the biggest champions of bitcoin, shelved plans to start a cryptocurrency hedge fund and predicted that the digital money may extend its plunge to $8,000." [Bloomberg]
  • Past bubbles: "In 2013, Bitcoin's price rose first to a high above $200 before crashing. Later that same year, an investing mania in China drove the price to another high above $1,200, followed by yet another plunge." [NYT]

The big picture: Bitcoin nearly hit $20,000 earlier this week. It was valued around $1,000 at the beginning of 2017.

Go deeper: People bought a lot of "coin" and "crypto" web domains in 2017

Go deeper