On Monday, June 15, 2022, Bitcoin price hit its lowest point since mid-December 2020, with a price of $20,080 per unit. Plenty of cryptocurrency supporters are debating whether the drop is the bottom of the market, or whether the drop will lead to bigger losses. Since then, Bitcoin is down 70% from its all-time high of $69,000, but has traditionally been known to drop around 80% or more from past records.
Will Bitcoin drop more than 80% this time?
The cryptoeconomy has had a rough few weeks (BTC) down 35% in the past 14 days, and speculators have gone from speculating on whether it could be a bear market to saying it is definitely a bear market.
There have been many capitulations over the past few days, with hundreds of thousands of cryptocurrency traders liquidating nearly $1.3 billion on Monday. Two days later, Bitcoin fell to a low of $20,080 per BTC, the last time BTC traded at that price was 17 months ago in mid-December 2020.
At current dollar values, Bitcoin is down 70% from the $69,000 ATH reached on November 10, 2021. During the bull markets of 2013 and 2017, Bitcoin (BTC) fell by more than 80% from its previous price peak. Bobby Ong, founder of Coingecko.com, who tweeted about Bitcoin’s decline from past bull markets, included Ethereum (ETH) in its 2017 rally.
For example, after BTC peaked at around $1,127 per unit, by 2015, BTC fell 82% to $200 per coin. In 2017, BTC jumped to $19,423 per unit, but in 2018 the price fell to a low of $3,217, 83% below its peak price, Ong’s tweet shows.
The Coingecko co-founder explained that Ethereum fell by 94% during the 2017-2018 price cycle. Ong’s tweet was posted on June 11, 2022, at a time when BTC was 59% less valuable than ATH in USD and 69% less valuable than ETH. At the time of writing, ETH’s dollar value is 75.4% below the crypto asset’s all-time high of $4,815 reached on November 10, 2021.
Of course, there is a lot of speculation and theories as to whether the price of BTC will go lower from here. Down 80% BTC, around $13,800 per unit. If Ethereum fell 90% from ATH last year, the dollar would be worth around $488. Some speculators are predicting that BTC may reach $12,000 per unit, while ETH may reach $360 per unit.
Bitcoin miners struggle as macroeconomic disaster continues to shake global markets
So far, more than $2 trillion in value has left the crypto ecosystem since the crypto economy peaked last year. Traders are also concerned that prices will need to be higher when BTC finds a block below $19,000 BTC will erase previous pre-halving price highs. Furthermore, using the current BTC exchange rate and $0.12 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), only 7 ASIC mining rigs are making steady profits.
Bitcoin hash rate on June 15, 2022. At $0.12 per kWh, using today’s BTC exchange rate, only 7 ASIC miners are profitable.
Bitmain’s Antminer S19 XP with 140 terahashes per second (TH/s), using the same electricity bill of $0.12 per kWh, earning an estimated profit of $3.49 per day, the Microbt Whatsminer M50S with 126 TH/s estimated per day Earn $1.51 in BTC profit. At $0.12 per kWh, machines producing 84 TH/s are unprofitable unless they get access to cheaper power sources.
All of these signs, along with the thousands of cryptocurrency employees fired over the past few weeks, can be said to suggest that this is definitely a bear market. Questions remain whether this cycle will occur, the 80%+ retracement and how long the bear market will last.
There’s also macroeconomic catastrophe and fears of rising inflation, central bank rate hikes and the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia. Bitcoin steadily rose to its ATH as Americans and citizens from other countries received stimulus payments.
While Bitcoin and the crypto market have never experienced a Covid-19 lockdown economy before, the crypto economy has also never been tested in the current situation.
From this perspective, the bad macro situation makes Bitcoin’s bear market adjustment cycle even more confusing.
