Bitcoin plunges in biggest intraday drop since February

'The crypto world is waking up with a bit of a sore head today'

Bitcoin plunged the most in more than seven weeks, just days after reaching a record.

The biggest crypto coin fell 10.1% to $54,743.57 as of 7:30am in New York on Sunday, after declining as much as 15.1% to $51,707.51 in the Asian day. Ether, the second-largest token, dropped almost 18% before paring losses.

Several online reports attributed the plunge to speculation the U.S. Treasury may crack down on money laundering that’s carried out through digital assets.

Bitcoin hit a record high of $64,869.78 last week ahead of the debut trade for the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global Inc. on the Nasdaq exchange Wednesday. Coinbase ended its first trading week on a high note after bullish reviews from Wall Street analysts.

Dogecoin, a token created as a joke and which has been boosted by the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Cuban, rallied more than 110% Friday before dropping the next day. Demand was so brisk for the token that investors trying to trade it on Robinhood crashed the site, the online exchange said in a blog post Friday.

“The crypto world is waking up with a bit of a sore head today,” said Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of crypto lender Nexo. “Dogecoin’s 100% Friday rally was ‘peak party,’ after the Bitcoin record and Coinbase listing earlier in the week. Euphoria was in the air. And usually in the crypto world, there’s a price to pay when that happens.” Besides the “unsubstantiated” report of a U.S. Treasury crackdown, Trenchev said factors for the declines may have included “excess leverage, Coinbase insiders dumping equity after the direct listing and a mass outage in China’s Xinjiang province hitting Bitcoin miners.”

Bloomberg