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Bitcoin is fast losing its shine. After holding support at $6,000 over the weekend, the No.1 digital currency finally gave way late Monday, trading to $5,900.38, its lowest level since June 29, and inches away from making a new low for 2018.
The August slump has shed more than $70 billion of the total value of cryptocurrencies, causing widespread panic selling according to one analyst. “We are seeing fear-based selling pushing the market lower at the moment,” said Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at Think Markets U.K. “All that’s changed is the delay in the SEC decision,” referring to the Securities and Exchange Commission delaying its ruling on the VanEck-Solid X bitcoin ETF application.
Moreover, Aslam said he’s seeing increasing interest from large institutions to dip their toes in at these levels. “Large players are definitely getting more active at these levels,” Aslam continued, adding that he had heard an unnamed German bank was considering a significant purchase of bitcoin.
In early Tuesday trading, a single bitcoin BTCUSD, -2.22% was last worth $6,006.62, down 4.3% since Monday 5 p.m. Eastern Time on the Kraken exchange and less that $300 from making a new low for 2018.
Ether drags altcoins lower
The underperformance of altcoins, which refers collectively to smaller coins other than bitcoin, continued Tuesday, led by Ether ETHUSD, -7.66% the second biggest digital currency, which is down 9.6% at $260.20. Elsewhere, Bitcoin Cash BCHUSD, -6.34% is trading lower by 9.3% at $483.60, Litecoin LTCUSD, -6.73% has lost 9.5% to $50.97 and Ripple’s XRP XRPUSD, -5.35% is down 7.5% at 26 cents.
The slumping altcoin performance pushed bitcoin’s share of the overall crypto market cap to a new 2018 high of 54.2%, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
Bitcoin futures are looking at potential back-to-back losing sessions The Cboe Global Markets Inc.’s August contract XBTQ8, -3.45% is down 4% at $5,985 and the CME Group Inc.’s August contract BTCQ8, -3.37% is lower by 3.9% at $5,990.
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