Bitcoin prices calmed down Sunday following a wild selloff Saturday that saw the cryptocurrency’s price plunge more than 20%.
As of 11 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, bitcoin
BTCUSD,
-0.16%
was at about $49,125, according to Coinbase data, after sinking to as low as $42,169 over the course of an hour early Saturday morning.
After Sunday’s recovery, bitcoin is still down about 14% over the past five days, and off 20% over the past month. But it’s up about 70% year to date, and 158% over the past 12 months.
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The sharp selloff Saturday followed a downturn in global stocks, and was spread among other crypo assets. Ether
ETHUSD,
+0.78%,
which runs on the ethereum blockchain, lost about 15% at one point Saturday, but it regained those losses, trading at $4,175 by Sunday night. Saturday’s plunge knocked about $400 billion off the global crypto market cap, according to Coinmarketcap.com, before recovering most of that.
Read: ‘A perfect storm’ as bitcoin stages weekend crash that puts it on verge of ‘breakdown.’ Here’s what crypto bulls are saying.
Crypto analyst Nicholas Merten, founder and CEO of Digifox and host of a popular crypto-focused YouTube channel, tweeted Sunday that bitcoin is not facing a bear market — traditionally thought of as a drop of 20% or more from a recent high — but warned its price decline may continue:
Also read: Hackers steal at least $150 million in assets from crypto platform BitMart
