Bitcoin (BTC), the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency, lost nearly 20% of its value over the weekend and dropped below $43,000 for the first time in 3 months after Elon Musk criticized BTC on Twitter.
According to a recent tweet by Musk, large mining companies are controlling the majority of the Bitcoin market. The CEO of Tesla also called BTC a “Highly Centralized” cryptocurrency in his latest tweet. The recent statement from Musk came after Tesla announced the suspension of BTC Payments last week.
“Bitcoin is actually highly centralized, with supermajority controlled by a handful of big mining (aka hashing) companies. A single coal mine in Xinjiang flooded, almost killing miners, and BTC hash rate dropped 35%,” Musk tweeted.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency is currently facing extreme selling pressure. The total market cap of Bitcoin dropped below $800 billion on Monday for the first time since February 2021. As of writing, BTC is trading near $44,000 with a market cap of approximately $800 billion. The latest crash in Bitcoin has accelerated liquidation across the cryptocurrency market.
Bybt.com, a crypto Analytics platform, mentioned that approximately $2 billion worth of long crypto positions got liquidated in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin accounted for liquidation of more than $1 billion worth of long positions. Ethereum came at the second spot with the liquidation of nearly $500 million worth of long positions.
Tesla’s Bitcoin Dump?
In his latest tweets, Musk hinted that Tesla may offload Bitcoin completely. Musk CEO replied to a tweet predicting the dump of Tesla’s BTC holdings. “Bitcoiners are going to slap themselves next quarter when they find out Tesla dumped the rest of their BTC holdings. With the amount of hate Elon Musk is getting, I wouldn’t blame him,” Crypto Whale, a well-known analyst, mentioned on Twitter. Musk simply replied “Indeed”.
Musk later clarified that Tesla has not sold any Bitcoin yet.
The overall market cap of digital currencies lost nearly $250 billion in the last 24 hours. Apart from Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin, XRP and Dogecoin also lost significant value over the weekend.
