For the second time in a month, Bitcoin has fallen below $30,000. This time, the bearish calls for further drops are growing louder.
Bitcoin and other digital coins tumbled alongside global stock markets yesterday. That wiped $85 billion in value off the entire crypto market in a 24-hour span as of 5 a.m. EST today. Bitcoin fell as much as 7%; Ether and Dogecoin fell around 7%; and Binance coin tanked a solid 12%, gearing some traders up for even deeper price declines.
The last time Bitcoin fell below the $30,000 mark was on June 22. The king of the crypto coins is now trading 37% below its 100-day moving average, and it’s now more than 50% below its mid-April all-time high of almost $65,000.
Currently Bitcoin is hovering around the $29,500 mark, but market watchers say it could fall to around $22,000. “I am expecting a strong dip toward $22K,” said Patrick Heusser, head of trading at Crypto Finance AG, in a Telegram interview on Monday. Fund manager Jeffrey Gundlach said something similar late last week before the latest crypto selloff.
Meanwhile, the options market saw increased demand for out-of-money or lower-strike put options priced at $22,000 and $20,000.
The latest plunge in the digital currency comes as U.S. futures rebound from a rough Monday session.
The Crypto Fear & Greed Index—which displays the mood among market participants by measuring cash and equity allocations against market ups and downs—put Bitcoin in the “extreme fear” category at 19/100, moving in tandem with the traditional markets, which are also in the “extreme fear” zone.
But year to date, returns on Bitcoin are underperforming stocks, with the S&P 500 up 15% YTD while BTC is treading around 5% higher YTD.
Bitcoin investment volumes have also dropped to just 38% of its year-to-date average over the past week.
This comes at a time when China has been forced to shut down operations on Bitcoin mining because of its energy intensive nature. China’s central bank has also demanded finance and fintech companies not offer any crytpo-related services to customers, a move that started the latest tailspin a month ago.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
