Bitcoin just ended its worst-performing month in seven years in terms of month-over-month price declines.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency began November at an average price across exchanges of $6,341, but as of 0:00 UTC on December 1 is trading at just $3,964, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index.
As it stands, the near $2,400 drop in bitcoin’s price has created a -37.4 percent monthly performance, which is its worst on record since August 2011, when it fell from roughly $8 to $4.80 to print a -40 percent monthly loss, according to data from the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (BPI).
Since bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization by a considerable margin, now comprising 53.5 percent of the total market, all other cryptocurrencies tend to follow its lead when it comes to price performance.
As a result, the broader market suffered substantial losses in November, with just one of the world’s largest 25 cryptocurrencies able to post a monthly gain.
The outlier was bitcoin SV, a fork off of the original bitcoin cash blockchain, yet it has only existed long enough to accrue 22 days of pricing data on CoinMarketCap.
Double-digits losses were common among the world’s largest cryptocurrencies in November. Tezos (XTZ) was the worst performer of the month, reflecting a 61.5 percent loss with bitcoin cash (BCH) just 3 percent behind.
What’s more, the average performance of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization was -30 percent, while the average performance of all 25 was -37 percent.
Market Cap Monthly Chart
Since market capitalization is a function of the price of a cryptocurrency multiplied by its circulating supply, the capitalization of the total market takes a hit whenever prices experience a steep drop.
At the beginning of November, the total market capitalization recorded a value of $203 billion, yet today that figure records $130 billion, a 35 percent loss.
The total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market has now lost over $690 billion and 83 percent of its value since reaching its all time high north of $820 billion this past January, according to CoinMarketCap.
Disclosure: The author holds BTC, AST, REQ, OMG, FUEL, 1st and AMP at the time of writing.
Bitcoin image via Shutterstock