{"id":285218,"date":"2018-11-19T14:05:39","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T12:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=285218"},"modified":"2018-11-19T14:05:39","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T12:05:39","slug":"bitcoin-falls-towards-5000-mark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/285218\/bitcoin-falls-towards-5000-mark\/","title":{"rendered":"Bitcoin falls towards $5,000 mark"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Cryptocurrencies resumed their slump on Monday, with Bitcoin falling within 5% of the $5,000 mark in the wake of a split of one of the largest major tokens.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin touched an October 2017 low and was trading at $5,235.17 at 6:44 a.m. in New York, according to consolidated Bloomberg pricing. Rival coins including Ether and Litecoin also retreated at least 9%.<\/p>\n

The wider Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index fell as much as 7.4% to a one year-low on a closing basis while XRP, the token associated with Ripple, was the lone gainer among major digital currencies.<\/p>\n

Volatility has returned to cryptocurrencies, with the largest tokens shedding billions in market value since the hard fork of Bitcoin Cash debuted last week. That came as two software-development factions failed to agree on a way to upgrade the offshoot of the original Bitcoin, leading to a computing power arms race.<\/p>\n

The cryptocurrency industry has now lost more than $660 billion in value from a January peak, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com. Bitcoin is down more than 70% from its December 2017 high, the data show.<\/p>\n

Thomas J. Lee, managing partner at Fundstrat Global Advisors and a long-time crypto bull, slashed his year-end price target for Bitcoin to $15,000 from $25,000.<\/p>\n

The target is based on a fair value multiple of 2.2 times the breakeven cost of mining, which the firm pegs at $7,000, according to a report last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cCrypto-specific events have led to greater uncertainty in the crypto market, including the contentious hard fork for Bitcoin Cash,\u201d Lee said in the note.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin\u2019s break below $6,000 \u201chas lead to a renewed wave of pessimism,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n
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Read: Bitcoin dips below $6,000<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cryptocurrencies resumed their slump on Monday, with Bitcoin falling within 5% of the $5,000 mark in the wake of a split of one of the largest major tokens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":219467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[5537,26],"class_list":["post-285218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-bitcoin","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285224,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285218\/revisions\/285224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}