Bitcoin price plunges amid Omicron Covid variant fears
The emergence of the Omicron covid variant has panicked investors and caused a dramatic plunge to the price of bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency.
Markets
Don't miss out on the headlines from Markets. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The cryptocurrency market saw huge value dips amid investor fears about the Covid-19 Omicron variant, with bitcoin, ether, XPR and doegecoin prices dropping.
The price of bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency on the market, is now trading at $US54,620 ($A76,690) after hitting a record high of more than $US69,000 ($A97,000) earlier this month, The Sun reported.
XPR saw a 1.40 per cent drop to $US0.0233 ($A0.033).
Dogecoin and etheruem were down seven per cent and 4.44 per cent respectively on Saturday.
The news comes in the midst of a sudden stock market crash that has some investors concerned.
Alongside plummeting crypto prices, the Dow Jones index saw a 2.8 per cent loss, the S&P 500 dropped 2.3 per cent, and the Nasdaq Composite saw a similar drop at 2.2 per cent.
Website Yahoo! Finance reported that a “new and more transmissible variant of Covid-19” identified in South Africa may have something to do with the market drop.
These concerns all come after Tokyo plans to repay creditors of Mt Gox after losing half a billion dollars in bitcoin, in 2014.
“Selling pressure has been quite constant,” said Matthew Dibb, chief operating officer at Singapore-based crypto asset manager Stack Funds.
This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission
Originally published as Bitcoin price plunges amid Omicron Covid variant fears