The price of bitcoin has fallen by 20 per cent in just over 24 hours, having briefly hit a new all-time high above $58,000 on Sunday.

Market analysts have called the cryptocurrency ’s collapse a “price correction”, though the reason for such a massive adjustment is not immediately clear.

Wild price swings are a familiar issue for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, often exacerbated by the influx of large amounts of capital into such a nascent market.
Other major cryptocurrencies experienced significant losses, including Ethereum (ether), Ripple (XRP), litecoin, bitcoin cash and dogecoin.

In total, more than $400 billion was wiped from the combined market capitalisations of all cryptocurrencies, in what has been the biggest loss of value in the market’s history.

In terms of percentage losses, bitcoin has seen worse crashes – most notably in the days following the great crypto bull run of 2017, when its price fell from close to $20,000 to below $10,000.