Bitcoin Price Drop Due To Criticism From US Treasury's Secretary - Cryptocurrency Expert

Bitcoin Price Drop Due to Criticism From US Treasury's Secretary - Cryptocurrency Expert

The current slump in bitcoin's value from record high levels can be attributed to the criticism from the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and the fall of major IT companies' stocks on the back of COVID-19 vaccinations roll-out, Gleb Kostarev, head of Binance cryptocurrency exchange in Russia, told Sputnik on Wednesday

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th February, 2021) The current slump in bitcoin's value from record high levels can be attributed to the criticism from the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and the fall of major IT companies' stocks on the back of COVID-19 vaccinations roll-out, Gleb Kostarev, head of Binance cryptocurrency exchange in Russia, told Sputnik on Wednesday.

"Analysts pinpoint two major reasons for this slump in bitcoin's value - profit-taking tactics employed by so-called whale investors and Janet Yellen's speech, where she criticized the huge amount of energy consumed in bitcoin mining," Kostarev said in an interview.

Earlier in the week, US Treasury Secretary Yellen called bitcoin "an extremely inefficient way of conducting transactions" at the New York Times DealBook conference. Yellen also slammed BTC as an "extremely volatile" and "highly speculative asset" that is rarely used for financial transactions in addition to its "staggering" consumption of energy.

"At the same time, there is a notable fall in stock prices of tech companies. For example, Chinese stock exchange SZSE lost nearly 5 percent in these days, American NASDAQ fell 3.6 percent. Investors believe that the 2020 crisis has pushed the growth of tech companies and bitcoin, while their current fall is the result of development and spread of the vaccines," Kostarev added.

According to the CoinMarketCap portal, over the past 24 hours the price of bitcoin dropped to around $45,000 at the lowest. The cryptocurrency has since recovered somewhat, trading around the $50,000 mark on Wednesday.

Earlier on Sunday, bitcoin was priced at a record $58,000, and just overnight dropped below $50,000. Prior to the slump, BTC had been on a rally since end of January. During that time bitcoin price grew 1.7 times, from $32,000 to $56,000.