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Bitcoin prices calmed down Sunday following a wild selloff Saturday that saw the cryptocurrency’s price plunge more than 20%.
As of 7 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, bitcoin
BTCUSD,
was at about $49,250, according to Coinbase data, after sinking to as low as $42,169 over the course of an hour Saturday morning.
After Sunday’s recovery, bitcoin is still down about 14% over the past five days, and off 20% over the past month. But it’s up about 70% year to date, and 158% over the past 12 months.
The sharp selloff Saturday followed a downturn in global stocks, and was spread among other crypo assets. Ether
ETHUSD,
which runs on the ethereum blockchain, lost about 15% at one point Saturday, but it regained those losses, trading at $4,194 by Sunday night. Saturday’s plunge knocked about $400 billion off the global crypto market cap, according to Coinmarketcap.com, before recovering most of that.
Crypto analyst Nicholas Merten, founder and CEO of Digifox and host of a popular crypto-focused YouTube channel, tweeted Sunday that bitcoin is not facing a bear market — traditionally thought of as a drop of 20% or more from a recent high — but warned its price decline may continue:
