BTC Has Nearly Halved in Value Since Coinbase Went Public
2 min read
BTC has fallen by over 50% since April 14, the day crypto exchange Coinbase went public via direct listing on the Nasdaq.
Dubbed “Coinbase Day” by the crypto sphere, Coinbase’s debut on the Nasdaq on April 14 was considered a watershed moment for the industry.
“It speaks to more mainstream adoption on the horizon,” Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities, told Decrypt at the time.
But, as they have done many times before, the winds in the crypto industry can change quickly.
BTC in freefall
According to CoinGecko, BTC is currently priced at $35,482. This is a far cry from its current all-time high of nearly $64,500 on Coinbase Day. In fact, it is a drop of a whopping 81%.
BTC opened the day at $43,000, meaning that it has dropped by 16% today, reaching lows of $30,415.
It’s part of a wider crash, too. During the last seven days, BTC’s price has dropped by 36%.
Much of this decline has been attributed to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s reversal on BTC. After overseeing the EV manufacturer’s $1.5 billion investment into BTC some three months ago, Musk tweeted last week that Tesla is no longer accepting BTC as payment.
Tesla & BTC pic.twitter.com/YSswJmVZhP
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2021
“We are concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for BTC mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel,” Musk wrote.
Subsequently, BTC took another blow when Chinese payment associations issued a statement reiterating the central bank’s 2017 ban on financial institutions engaging in crypto transactions. The statement also warned investors against “speculative” crypto trading.
However, Bitcoiners aren’t concerned about the market crash.
“These cycles are common and the catalyst is simply different each time,” Jason Deane, BTC analyst at Quantum Economics, told Decrypt. He added, “Calmer heads will always prevail. BTC’s fundamentals remain as solid as ever and the long-term trends remain intact.”
ETH slips alongside BTC
BTC is not the only cryptocurrency that has nosedived recently.
ETH, the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, has dropped by over 24% in just the last 24 hours.
However, ETH watchers remain optimistic as its ETH 2.0 upgrade looms on the horizon, bringing a switch to the more energy-efficient proof of stake consensus mechanism.
“With ETH’s scalability nearly solved via Layer 2 and sharing, what can be built on-chain widens,” Charles Storry, head of growth at Phuture, told Decrypt, adding, “This is what excites the core community. The new applications that we are going to see come to market and the wider impact that’s going to have on others.”
