Bitcoin is down more than $1,700 since yesterday after a violent sell-off that rocked the markets and caught even seasoned traders off-guard.
At 16:00 UTC on June 27, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, bitcoin (BTC), suffered a steep correction in its price, dropping to a low of $10,300 after eight straight days in the green.
Prices attempted a rally above $11,300 with 30 minutes out from the daily close, which would have provided greater confidence in price consolidation for the bulls. Yet, instead, BTC closed on a down note below former resistance at $11,086.
BTC is currently changing hands at $11,067 and is down 14 percent over a 24-hour period.
As can be viewed above, BTC suffered a massive correction to the parabolic uptrend that had been ongoing for over two weeks. The move down was accompanied by a large surge in trading volume, with June 27’s daily total matching, if not, besting June 26’s postings across most exchanges.
For example, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, Binance, recorded $2.1 billion in total volume alone, while Huobi Global and OKEx recorded $1.7 billion and $1.4 billion over a 24-hour period, respectively.
Further, the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies combined suffered a $46.1 billion loss over the last 24-hours, marking the biggest single day loss in market value since May 17, 2019.
The total market cap is down from $372.4 billion to stand at $324.5 billion at press time while the total amount for BTC’s loss in value by trades end amounted to just over $33 billion.
Altcoins on the rise
Perhaps the greater story, howecer, is the altcoin market’s rise against BTC pairings, which has driven up their value while BTC continued to decline in price.
All but two out of the top 20 are in the green today, up between 1.3 and 15.72 percent and are demonstrating a small bounce across the lower timeframes.
The idea that traders have switched from BTC to altcoins in the short-term is supported by a change in the BTC dominance rate, down 1.41 percent over 24-hours, from 63.37 percent to 61.96 percent. This suggests traders are currently moving to tether (USDT) or major altcoins to conserve some profit from BTC’s violent drop.
The short-term remains highly volatile, so BTC could experience a brief bounce on today’s price action, but that will need to be accompanied by similar levels in volume in order to end the recent sell-off.
Disclosure: The author holds no cryptocurrency at the time of writing.
Bitcoin image via Shutterstock; Charts via TradingView and CoinMarketCap