Bitcoin plummets in brutal week for crypto

Bitcoin has had a brutal week, with analysts predicting the cryptocurrency could fall below a horror threshold.

As of Friday the crypto price crash had seen around $1.2 trillion wiped from the combined crypto market after it hit an all-time high of $3 trillion in November. Picture: Ozan Kose / AFP

Cryptocurrencies have had a brutal week, with bitcoin’s price plunge wiping billions off the crypto market.

Bitcoin slid about 19 per cent in the last seven days and eight per cent in the last 24 hours. It was worth $35,291 ($A49,126) just after 8am Saturday AEDT, according to CoinMarketCap.

It is a huge fall from an all-time high of nearly US$69,000 (A$96,000) in November.

Other major coins ethereum, Binance’s BNB, solana, cardano and XRP have also taken a hit this week.

Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency after bitcoin, slid about 27 per cent in the last seven days and 10 per cent in the last 24 hours.

As of Friday the crypto price crash had seen around $1.2 trillion wiped from the combined crypto market after it hit an all-time high of $3 trillion in November, according to Forbes.

Experts in the field believe values have dropped as a result of the US Federal Reserve raising rates this year, as well as heightened pressure from China and Russia to stifle digital currency trading in their countries.

It has been a bad week for bitcoin. Picture: CoinMarketCap

Analysts have warned the price of bitcoin could fall even further this year.

“The mass marketing of bitcoin reminds us of the activity of stockbrokers in the run-up to the 1929 crash,” Paul Jackson, who is US investment company Invesco’s global head of asset allocation, wrote in a note this week, according to Business Insider.

“We think it is not too much of a stretch to imagine bitcoin falling below $30,000 this year,” Mr Jackson said, adding he believes there’s at least a 30 per cent chance of it happening.

Crackdown on cryptocurrencies

Russia, the world’s third-largest centre for bitcoin mining, proposed banning the use and mining (the creation) of cryptocurrencies this week.

According to a report released by the country’s central bank on Thursday local time, cryptocurrency mining and trading goes against Russia’s green agenda and can be used in money laundering or to finance terrorism.

The report estimated the cryptocurrency industry generated $7 billion a year in Russia.

Countries around the world are cracking down on cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin. Picture: Ozan Kose / AFP

The world’s largest centre for bitcoin mining is the United States, followed by Kazakhstan.

China was once the global powerhouse of bitcoin mining but the country banned it last year, which caused bitcoin miners to relocate to Kazakhstan, in search of cheap energy.

Civil unrest Kazakhstan earlier this month saw a fifth of the world’s bitcoin mining knocked out.

Violent protests across Kazakhstan were triggered by surging fuel prices and turned into more general protests against the government.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ordered the nation’s telecom provider to stop internet service, and mining bitcoin is impossible without the internet.