By David DiMolfetta
After hitting a record high of $64,000 last week coinciding with Coinbase’s debut on the stock market, the value of popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin tumbled some $10,000 on April 19. It now trades at around $55,000 per token as of 5 p.m. April 21.
The reasons for its price slide are ultimately a mixed bag.
One possibility involves a greater global interest in crypto regulation. China recently launched the digital yuan, which the nation’s central bank will regulate. On the flip side, the central bank of Turkey fully banned the use of cryptocurrencies beginning April 30, saying the level of anonymity behind digital transactions leads to the risk of “non-recoverable” losses.
Major speculation for the dip also points to an April 17 rumor that the U.S. Treasury would begin pursuing financial institutions that launder digital money. In March of last year, the agency sanctioned two Chinese nationals, accusing them of laundering stolen cryptocurrency on behalf of a North Korean state-sponsored hacking organization.
While the nature of cryptocurrency mining and trading serves for a volatile environment, some fear currencies like Bitcoin and others may experience drops like Bitcoin’s crash in late 2017, when its price inflated to $19,000 and dropped down to around $4,000 in 2018.
JPMorgan analysts said that if popular cryptocurrency does not return back above $60,000 soon, it could be at risk of plummeting further.
“Over the past few days, Bitcoin futures markets experienced a steep liquidation in a similar fashion to the middle of last February, middle of last January or the end of last November. Momentum signals will naturally decay from here for several months, given their still elevated level,” they wrote. In January, the bank’s estimates put Bitcoin at $146,000.
On its first trading day, shares for Coinbase opened at $381 per share setting the initial market cap at $99.6 billion on a fully diluted basis. Quickly, the shares rose to $429, valuing the company at $122 billion before later reaching a low of $310.
Analysts expect that various American financial regulatory bodies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Department of Justice (DOJ), and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), will continue enacting standard procedure in regulating American financial activities during the Biden administration. Still, they anticipate novel regulatory developments in cryptocurrency.
“At this point, the CFPB is taking complaints related to crypto but has not brought enforcement actions,” said Paul Watkins, the managing director at Patomak Global Partners, on March 26 in a webinar. “It will be very interesting to see how this builds out, especially in a defiant, decentralized finance space where there are now products being developed that are looking more like consumer products.”
