The cryptocurrency markets were flashing red again on Thursday after bitcoin (BTC), the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, fell by more than $900 in 24 hours.
On August 14, beginning at 12:00 UTC, BTC began to fall sharply from $10,862 to as low as $9,888 before traders bought the price back up above $10,000.
It marks the worst single-day loss since July 16, approximately 30 days ago.
However, BTC’s price has successfully defended a sub $10,000 close on yesterday’s trading period and is currently changing hands at $10,084.
The move down was also accompanied by a large surge in total trading volume, rising $13.5 billion over a 24-hour period as investors and traders rushed to close their positions in order to stem the bleeding.
Major names such as ether (ETH), litecoin (LTC), XRP (XRP) and EOS (EOS) also began to fall in value at around the same time as BTC, losing between 8-12 percent respectively.
Further, the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies combined endured a $20 billion loss over 24 hours with a total valuation of $265.8 billion by the time the dust had settled.
The short term outlook remains a volatile one, so BTC could experience a bounce on today’s momentum, but that will need to be accompanied by strong levels in growing (bullish) volume in order to end the recent sell-off still being felt from August 10.
Disclosure: This author holds no cryptocurrency at the time of writing.
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