Falling below the $20,000 barrier would be a sobering milestone for a market that boomed during the pandemic, analysts say.
“A move below $20,000 would be a massive psychological blow and could send bitcoin further into a tailspin,” Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda, a foreign exchange firm, said in a note on Tuesday.
Ether, the second-most valuable digital coin, slipped 12% on Thursday. It has now lost 78% of its value since its November peak.
The embattled industry is bracing for further pain.
The Celsius Network, one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency lenders, announced on Monday that “extreme market conditions” had forced it to temporarily halt all withdrawals, crypto swaps and transfers between accounts.
The company told its 1.7 million customers that has taken the decision to “stabilize liquidity and operations while we take steps to preserve and protect assets.” It said it would “take time” before customers were allowed to withdraw deposits again.
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, suspended withdrawals on its bitcoin network for a few hours on Monday after some transactions got “stuck” and caused a backlog.
— Jordan Valinsky contributed to this report.
