Bitcoin prices dropped dramatically early Saturday morning.
The price of the world’s most prominent cryptocurrency was down 12 percent at about 4:20 a.m. ET, reaching $47,495.
Bitcoin fell as low as $41,968 overnight, taking total losses for the day to 22 percent.
A combination of profit-taking and macroeconomic concerns triggered nearly a billion dollars’ worth of selling across cryptocurrencies.
Ether, another popular cyrptocurrency, also fell almost 10 percent overnight.
As of early afternoon Saturday, the nearly 11,400 cryptocurrencies tracked by data platform CoinGecko dropped more than 11 percent to $2.37 trillion. That value had briefly crossed $3 trillion last month, when bitcoin hit a record $69,000.
Cryptocurrencies began falling Friday, following data showing that job growth slowed in the U.S. last month and news of the omicron variant of the coronavirus.
The broad sell-off also comes as executives from eight major cryptocurrency firms are expected to testify for the first time before the U.S. House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday as lawmakers figure out how to best regulate cryptocurrencies.
Reuters contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
