Black Thursdays: The Five Worst Bitcoin Crashes
October 24, 1929, also known as “Black Thursday”, is notorious in the history of the stock market. After a decade of financial boom came to an end, Wall Street traders woke up to see the stock market suddenly drop 11% from the previous night. Larger falls continued over the next two years, and the country eventually plunged into a decade-long economic depression. As part of the trading week, CoinDesk recalls some of the worst falls in the history of cryptocurrencies.
June 2011: “Hey guys, it’s Nick.” If you are called an OG cryptocurrency investor, you probably made the best or worst decision of your life in June 2011.
“Hey guys, this is Nick. I just witnessed a very sharp fall in the price of bitcoins, ”a YouTube blogger with the nickname BookofNick told his subscribers in the video. Bitcoin, the only cryptocurrency in circulation at the time, fell from $17.50 to 1 cent. “That’s right guys, we buy bitcoin for one penny,” Nick said.
The crash came when an exchange called Mt.Gox, which handled over 70% of all bitcoin transactions, was hacked. Eventually, Mt.Gox filed for bankruptcy in 2014, losing almost 750,000 bitcoins of its customers.
On other exchanges, the low for bitcoin that year was around $2, and the cryptocurrency ended the year at just under $5.
December 2013: China. Two years later, more people outside the narrow spectrum of cryptocurrencies began to pay attention to the newest “internet currency”. For example, entrepreneur-turned-television personality Kevin O’Leary explained that bitcoin was a safe haven for people who don’t trust any other currency, and that it is “here to stay”.
Michael Saylor, Executive Chairman of MicroStrategy, tweeted on December 13, 2013: “Bitcoin’s days are numbered. It looks like it’s only a matter of time before it suffers the same fate as online gambling.” (Yes, this is the same Michael Saylor who is now one of the biggest bitcoin evangelists.)
In 2013, the Central Bank of China issued a warning against the use of Bitcoin as legal tender. The price of bitcoin has fallen over 50% from $1200 to less than $600.
Edward Moya, senior analyst at Oanda, says he heard about bitcoin in 2014 when it was trading in that range. “I thought it had basically lost half its value and there are people who say it will be worth $100,000 and even higher because global central banks are reckless and that is how I take control of what I have.” there is,” he said.
The fact that the price of bitcoin was constantly falling only added to the allure. “Just seeing which investors are supporting this move,” he says, got him interested, though he hasn’t invested yet.
December 2017: shortly before the cryptowinter. If skeptics look at the current price of bitcoin ($19,686) and its price five years ago, they can argue that there has been no progress. But back in December 2017, when the price of bitcoin topped $20,000 for the first time, traders were taken aback and many of the early buyers of the cryptocurrency suddenly became very wealthy.
But what goes up must go down. Just 12 days later, the crypto asset fell to $12,840. And this time, the collapse did not affect only Bitcoin. Other established crypto assets also lost value.
March 2020: pandemic shock. It’s hard to forget March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the US. As a result, the stock market lost 13% on March 16, nicknamed “Black Monday,” as the pandemic’s potentially devastating impact on the economy suddenly became undeniable.
Growing uncertainty has caused the collapse of crypto assets, which are considered among the riskiest assets. Bitcoin fell 57% to a low of $3,867 after trading near $10,000 a month earlier. Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value after Bitcoin, fell 46% that week.
In a strange epilogue, the pandemic ended up helping the cryptocurrency gain more attention. Over the next few months, Wall Street banks and investment firms including BlackRock, AllianceBernstein, Morgan Stanley, and Tudor Investment began buying up billions of dollars worth of bitcoin. PayPal has announced that it will allow 346 million customers to store bitcoins. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, a long-time opponent of bitcoin, said the cryptocurrency has “significant” upside potential.
Eventually, Bitcoin topped $20,000 on Dec. 16, eclipsing the previous all-time high to hit $29,374 by the end of 2020. What started as a crash ended as a rally.
May 2022: The collapse of Terra. After 2021, which was arguably the most successful year for the crypto industry, the reckoning came quickly.
First came the collapse of Terra, a blockchain with its own dollar-pegged stablecoin, UST. The UST token was supposed to hold a value of $1, but the price was not pegged – and soon traders also lost confidence in the blockchain’s native cryptocurrency, LUNA, whose price ended up dropping 99%.
The implosion led to a decline in digital asset markets, including the price of bitcoin. It didn’t help that the US Federal Reserve was rapidly raising interest rates to slow inflation, putting downward pressure on the prices of everything considered risky, from stocks to cryptocurrencies.
The victims of the market sell-off were Three Arrows Capital, which was once considered one of the most experienced crypto hedge funds.
Then, on June 12, Celsius Network, one of the largest and most successful crypto lenders, informed users that it had frozen their assets due to “extreme market conditions.”
Bitcoin lost almost 37% in June alone, falling from $32,000 to less than $18,000. Ether fell 44%.