Bitcoin, Ether down 50% from last month’s all-time highs

During the weekend, the sell-off in cryptocurrencies continued on Sunday afternoon with most major coins down over 20% to 30% or more in the last 24 hours.

Bitcoin, Ether down 50% from last month’s all-time highs

The largest cryptocurrency by market value, BTC is a bright spot only in comparison, being down a mere 16%. Both Bitcoin and Ether, the second-largest crypto that is down 15%, have now lost half their value from all-time highs set last month.

The price of bitcoin was at $32,297.15, down 14.95%. Earlier in the afternoon, it had reached as low as $31,179.69, all but wiping out year-to-date gains. Currently, BTC is trading around $35,000 and ETH is at $2,140, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Nick Mancini, an analyst at crypto sentiment analytics platform Trade the Chain, said the specific reason for today’s bloodbath was news from crypto exchange Huobi, which said it’s scaling back some of its offerings in some countries due to China’s increasingly hard line on crypto.

“Right after the news broke, short-term Bitcoin sentiment scores plummeted to levels not seen since May 19th, this was followed by a drop in price,” Mancini stated.

Although Huobi was the specific catalyst for today’s plunge, it’s just the latest negative news in the sector that has been battered in the last few weeks. Fears of the crackdown on crypto in China, fears of coming regulation in the U.S. and Tesla turning its back on bitcoin have all pummelled the crypto market.

Attracted by the massive gains in the space earlier in the year, New investors to crypto are now unnerved by a price graph that isn’t constantly moving up and to the right, according to Joe DePasquale, CEO of BitBull Capital. Illustrating how the string of bad news has rattled new investors, the search query “Should I sell my bitcoin?” soared on Google over the past week, according to CryptoSlate.

Going forward, several analysts said they see $30,000 as strong support and, with a lot of liquidations out of the way, a possible recovery in the coming week.