Bitcoin Price Drops Below $5,000 for First Time Since October 2017

The price of bitcoin (BTC) has dropped below $5,000 for the first time in over a year.

Seen as a key resistance level for the flagship cryptocurrency, bitcoin has seen a substantial sell-off in the last 24 hours – currently trading at $4,966 according to data from CryptoCompare:

What’s Driving the Slide?

A slump of over 11% in the last 24-hours, bitcoin has also seen its market cap drop substantially – now standing at $86.4bn.

While no one is clear as to what precisely is driving the recent sell-off that has gripped bitcoin and altcoin markets for the last week, it’s possible that last week’s Bitcoin Cash hard fork has played a part.

With the ongoing “war” between rival factions Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin Cash SV, many have connected the controversy and its drawing of hash power away from Bitcoin to the recent volatility.

Others see this price slide as presaging a much deeper correction – with Bloomberg Intelligence recently claiming that BTC could fall to $1,500.

Dogecoin (DOGE) creator and prominent crypto personality, Jackson Palmer, however, offered a more long-term perspective on the crash on Twitter:

The price of Bitcoin crashing below $5k doesn’t invalidate the need for a secure, decentralized medium of exchange that is digital in nature. It simply demonstrates that speculators and gamblers severely over-estimated how ready the technology currently is.

— Jackson Palmer (@ummjackson) November 19, 2018