SINGAPORE: Bitcoin stalled just short of the $50,000 mark on Monday and other cryptocurrencies slipped, as investors took profit from a record-breaking rally that is being driven by a worldwide shift in investor and public attitudes towards digital assets.
Bitcoin fell as much as 5.6% to $45,914 in Asian trading hours, after having posting a record high of $49,714.66 on Sunday. Rival crypto ethereum slid more than 8%, though both later pared some of those losses.
The dip, for now, taps the brakes on a surge that has vaulted the cryptocurrency from the fringes of finance to Wall Street, as big investors and large companies have begun to take the digital asset seriously and started to buy a lot of it.
Bitcoin is up about 20% in the week since electric carmaker Tesla Inc announced it had $1.5 billion in bitcoin and would accept the currency as payment. It has gained more than 60% for the year to date and more than 1,100% since last March.
“There’s this unadulterated wave of big players (buying) that has continued to push the price higher,” said Chris Weston, head of research at Melbourne brokerage Pepperstone. “We might be seeing one or two big funds just cashing out,” he said.
“The big question is: OK, you want to buy the pullback, but how big is the pullback that we are talking about?”
Lunar New Year holidays in Hong Kong and China also kept a lid on moves in Asia, while a tweet from Tesla boss and crypto advocate Elon Musk appeared to weigh on the price of dogecoin, which he had previously promoted.
“If major dogecoin holders sell most of their coins, it will get my full support,” he tweeted.
Dogecoin, a dog-themed currency created as a joke has been volatile in recent weeks owing to a number of Musk tweets referring to it.
It has dropped 18.3% to $0.0536 in the past 24 hours according to CoinDesk. Ethereum last sat at $1,740, about 7% below last week’s record high of $1,879.
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