Bitcoin has plunged to its lowest level in 18 months.
The world’s most valuable cryptocurrency dropped under $24,000 on Monday, losing 15 percent in 24 hours, according to CNN Business.
The whole crypto market has lost about $200 billion from the weekend until Monday morning, CNBC reported.
READ MORE! This crypto billionaire sleeps on a beanbag and wants to donate his $20 billion fortune
Ethereum followed suit and dipped below $1,100, but it did recover some ground.
Crypto exchange Luno’s Vijay Ayyar warned of “much lower bitcoin prices over the next month or two”.
“Since November 2021, sentiment has changed drastically given the Fed (Federal Reserve) rate hikes and inflation management,” he told CNBC.
“We’re also potentially looking at a recession given the Fed may need to finally tackle the demand side to manage inflation.”
Some of the most popular crypto exchange platforms, Binance and Celsius, paused withdrawals.
Binance, which claims to have a 24-hour trading volume of $76 billion, said the suspension on Monday was “due to an earlier batch of transactions getting stuck from low transaction fees submitted”.
Withdrawals resumed hours later.
Meanwhile, Celsius, a platform that says it has 1.7 million customers, paused all withdrawals, swap and transfers between accounts.
“We are taking this action today to put Celsius in a better position to honor, over time, its withdrawal obligations,” the platform said in a statement on Monday.
The crypto market is notoriously volatile.
In May, one of the worst crypto crashes in the past five years happened when Bitcoin dropped to about $28,000.
One of the richest bitcoin holders in the world lost $4 billion in just over a month.
The mystery Bitcoin investor owns 288,000 Bitcoins (BTC), which means their fortune was worth about $19.8 billion in November last year.
That’s when Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $68,000, but it’s worth just $8 billion now.
