Bitcoin drops to five-month low as investors dump risk assets

Bitcoin drops to five-month low as investors dump risk assets

Bitcoin and its peers tumbled on Friday as a sell-off in speculative assets picked up steam and after Russia’s central bank proposed to ban all cryptocurrency operations in the country.

The price of bitcoin dropped by as much as 7.4 per cent against the dollar during Asian trading on Friday to $38,261. Other major cryptocurrencies tumbled as well, with ether down almost 9 per cent.

The falls for some of the world’s largest cryptocurrencies wiped about $140bn off their combined market capitalisation, according to figures from CoinMarketCap.

The cryptocurrency rout comes as investors have dumped shares in tech companies, pushing the Nasdaq into correction territory on Thursday on expectations the US Federal Reserve will move to rein in loose pandemic monetary policy to combat inflation.

The selling in bitcoin began accelerating late in the New York trading day on Thursday after video streaming giant Netflix warned on subscriber growth. Shares in the company fell around 20 per cent in pre-market trading on the Nasdaq on Friday.

Andrew Sullivan, managing director at Outset Global in Hong Kong, said Asia was seeing “huge volumes going through in a number of markets as investors move to cash” on Friday, as technology shares in the region followed Wall Street