By
Bhushan Akolkar
May 13th, 2024
Though Bitcoin price dropped today, the coin is up almost 30% in the last 30 days.
Bitcoin price suddenly dropped more than 11% after the crypto community was hit with news of double-spend vulnerability of the Bitcoin public ledger. Notably, Bitcoin dropped below the $30k level to trade around $29k but has stabilized slightly above $31k according to Coinmarketcap.
Bitcoin price drop affected almost the entire altcoin market. For instance, Ethereum dropped more than 13% to trade around $1137.73 at the time of writing. Others like Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash followed suit but had stabilized at the time of writing.
Bitcoin Price amid Vulnerability Concerns
A report by BitMEX noted that there might have been a double-spend of approximately 0.00062063 BTC ($21). The claim spread like wildfire leading to fear in the crypto market on the newly identified bitcoin vulnerability.
However, BitMEX later clarified that it was not a double-spend but rather two blocks mined simultaneously. Ripple CTO David Schwartz explained it to be a conflict in the transaction that was later on solved. “Someone mined a bitcoin block that had a transaction in it, but that block was later replaced by another block that had a conflicting transaction in it. So if you relied on that first transaction (delivering some good because you thought you got bitcoin), you could have lost $22,” Schwartz said.
Inasmuch it was a FUD, the damage was already done as millions of trades were liquefied. Analysts worry that if the asset does not long from the current position, further bleeding could occur in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Bitcoin volatility is said to spike during bull rallies and some analysts think the asset might be doing what it does best.
“Being Bitcoin, a 10% range intraday is a mere flesh wound to the digital asset, in a world where tradable versus investible is seriously blurred,” said Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst at Oanda Asia Pacific Pte. The digital coin could “easily be $35,000 again tomorrow or could drop through $30,000 and test notional support at $27,000.”
Notably, let not the recent retrace delude you, Bitcoin is up approximately 29.8% in the last 30 days. Besides, the asset gained more than 254% last year. From a technical point of view, Bitcoin price is still making higher highs and higher lows on the higher time frame. Mind you, Bitcoin price 200 moving average is still indicating the asset is on the uptrend.
Institutional investors continue to scramble for the asset with withdrawals from exchanges at their all-time high. Meanwhile, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust continues to record daily highs according to the daily updates.