After touching life-time highs of around $58,300, bitcoin prices fell over 18 percent in a two-day sell-off which took the premier cryptocurrency below the $50,000-mark. At the time of writing this copy, bitcoin was trading 10.12 percent lower at $50,364.52. It touched a 24-hour high of $56,668.45 and a 24-hour low of $47,780.75. Year-to-date, bitcoin is up about 73 percent.
While the general weakness in the financial markets could have weighed on the prices, billionaire CEO Elon Musk’s latest tweets on the cryptocurrency may have accelerated the flash crash.
On Saturday, the Tesla chief tweeted the price of bitcoin and ethereum seemed high. The maverick CEO was responding to economist and cryptocurrency skeptic, Peter Schiff, who said that gold was better than both bitcoin and conventional cash.
Musk said in a tweet: “Money is just data that allows us to avoid the inconvenience of barter …”
“That said, BTC & ETH do seem high lol,” he added.
An email saying you have gold is not the same as having gold. You might as well have crypto.
Money is just data that allows us to avoid the inconvenience of barter.
That data, like all data, is subject to latency & error. The system will evolve to that which minimizes both.
Dutch tulips in the 1600s reached extraordinarily high levels before dramatically collapsing in 1637.