Bitcoin tumbled as much as 10 percent yesterday to below US$4,500, bringing the world’s best-known cryptocurrency’s losses to 30 percent within a week, as a selloff in digital currencies intensified across the board.
Other cryptocurrencies also skidded sharply, with Ethereum’s ether losing 10 percent and Ripple’s XRP down 13 percent in a largely sentiment-driven slide.
The latest move lower started this month after a period of relative stability, with prices of bitcoin having hovered at about the US$6,500 mark for several months.
Photo: Reuters
“The euphoria has died and prices have consolidated with lower lows and lower highs. A lot of people have lost interest,” Forex.com analyst Fawad Razaqzada said.
Yesterday’s falls coincided with broader drops in financial markets. European shares weakened following a big fall on Wall Street.
As well as a general decline in investor confidence in the value of cryptocurrencies, some traders have also blamed the recent drop on fears that a “hard fork” in bitcoin cash, where the smaller coin that split into two separate currencies, could destabilize others.
Bitcoin was trading yesterday at US$4,354.20, its lowest level on the Bitstamp exchange since October last year.
It has lost about 75 percent of its value since peaking in December last year.
A regulatory clampdown on cryptocurrency trading early this year and a drop in investor interest have sent people scrambling for the exit.
Cryptocurrency advocates say price volatility is to be expected and that the need for virtual currencies that operate outside the mainstream banking system would outlast any short-term price falls.
The second and third-largest cryptocurrencies, XRP and ether, were trading at US$0.4451 and US$133 respectively on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange.
According to industry tracker Coinmarketcap.com, the total market capitalization of virtual currencies is now below US$150 billion, down from about US$800 billion in January.
JITTERS: Nexperia has a 20 percent market share for chips powering simpler features such as window controls, and changing supply chains could take years European carmakers are looking into ways to scratch components made with parts from China, spooked by deepening geopolitical spats playing out through chipmaker Nexperia BV and Beijing’s export controls on rare earths. To protect operations from trade ructions, several automakers are pushing major suppliers to find permanent alternatives to Chinese semiconductors, people familiar with the matter said. The industry is considering broader changes to its supply chain to adapt to shifting geopolitics, Europe’s main suppliers lobby CLEPA head Matthias Zink said. “We had some indications already — questions like: ‘How can you supply me without this dependency on China?’” Zink, who also
The number of Taiwanese working in the US rose to a record high of 137,000 last year, driven largely by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) rapid overseas expansion, according to government data released yesterday. A total of 666,000 Taiwanese nationals were employed abroad last year, an increase of 45,000 from 2023 and the highest level since the COVID-19 pandemic, data from the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) showed. Overseas employment had steadily increased between 2009 and 2019, peaking at 739,000, before plunging to 319,000 in 2021 amid US-China trade tensions, global supply chain shifts, reshoring by Taiwanese companies and
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) received about NT$147 billion (US$4.71 billion) in subsidies from the US, Japanese, German and Chinese governments over the past two years for its global expansion. Financial data compiled by the world’s largest contract chipmaker showed the company secured NT$4.77 billion in subsidies from the governments in the third quarter, bringing the total for the first three quarters of the year to about NT$71.9 billion. Along with the NT$75.16 billion in financial aid TSMC received last year, the chipmaker obtained NT$147 billion in subsidies in almost two years, the data showed. The subsidies received by its subsidiaries —
OUTLOOK: Pat Gelsinger said he did not expect the heavy AI infrastructure investments by the major cloud service providers to cause an AI bubble to burst soon Building a resilient energy supply chain is crucial for Taiwan to develop artificial intelligence (AI) technology and grow its economy, former Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger said yesterday. Gelsinger, now a general partner at the US venture capital firm Playground Global LLC, was asked at a news conference in Taipei about his views on Taiwan’s hardware development and growing concern over an AI bubble. “Today, the greatest issue in Taiwan isn’t even in the software or in architecture. It is energy,” Gelsinger said. “You are not in the position to have a resilient energy supply chain, and that,
RSS