Key Insights
- Bitcoin price fell by almost 8% and hit a two-month low. The cryptocurrency is worth about $26,500.
- Other major cryptocurrencies have also dropped in price, including Ethereum, BNB and Dogecoin.
- The plunge coincided with the publication of The Wall Street Journal that Elon Musk’s SpaceX company got rid of part of its cryptocurrency.
The price of bitcoin dropped sharply on August 18 — the fall reached almost 8%. As of 12:30 GMT, the cryptocurrency was worth about $26,530 — the drop for the day was 7.06%, data from the CoinMarketCap cryptocurrency exchange shows.
At a 24-hour low, the cryptocurrency was worth $25,409. The price of bitcoin fell to a two-month low, Reuters specified.
Other popular cryptocurrencies also fell in price, shows CoinMarketCap. For example, as of 12:30 GMT, Ethereum was losing 5.81% and cost $1,687, while BNB was down 5.2% and cost $218.8.
The price of the Dogecoin cryptocurrency, which billionaire Elon Musk showed attention to, fell by 7.5%, to $0.062. On the contrary, Tether and USD Coin cryptocurrencies rose in price.
The fall has leveled almost all of the growth of bitcoin, which has continued since June.
In July, the price of bitcoin reached $31,814 — during trading on August 17-18, the cryptocurrency lost about 15% of this value. The fall in the value of bitcoin on August 17 was the strongest in a single day since November 2022, when the FTX crypto exchange collapsed.
Why Bitcoin price likely dropped
The decline in cryptocurrency prices coincided with the publication of The Wall Street Journal: it reported that Elon Musk‘s private space company SpaceX wrote off the value of its bitcoin assets by $373 million in 2021 and 2022 and sold part of its cryptocurrency (sales volumes in the publication are not specified).
Tesla, led by Musk, did the same, the WSJ reported back in 2022. Digital asset merchants have been keeping a close eye on Musk’s actions since 2021, when Tesla announced the ability to accept payments in cryptocurrency.
On Thursday, August 17, the major world stock indexes ended the trading day with a fall. Quotes in Asia may fall on the basis of five days of trading for the third week in a row due to concerns about the Chinese economy and the fact that the base rate in the United States will remain elevated for longer, writes Reuters.
The MSCI All Country stock index, which includes securities of companies from different parts of the world, fell on Friday to its lowest level since the beginning of June – it lost 5.85% in August.