Here's How Hard Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies Are Crashing Right Now

Panic appears to be setting in for cryptocurrency investors.

The price of Bitcoin, which had plunged even before this week's broader stock market crash on Monday, has fallen more than 40% in the last week. Over the past 24 hours alone, Bitcoin is down 20%.

Prices dropped below $6,000 early on Tuesday, hitting a 12-week low, according to the cryptocurrency-tracking site Coindesk. A mere 24 hours earlier, each unit of Bitcoin was trading for around $7,500. One week ago, Bitcoin was above $10,000.

The all-time high in the Bitcoin market was set in mid-December, when each unit of the cryptocurrency was worth nearly $20,000. Bitcoin was down 70% from that high as of early Tuesday.

In other words, if you invested $1,000 in Bitcoin at its peak, it would be worth a measly $300 right now. Heck, if you invested $1,000 in Bitcoin just yesterday, you would have already lost $200 on paper.

Other cryptocurrencies have also been crashing. Ripple, Cardano, and Bitcoin Cash are all down more than 20% in the past 24 hours, according to Coindesk. And this comes after a similar dip last week, when cryptos like Ripple, Ethereum, and Litecoin all fell more than 25% in a single day.

Ripple, which was viewed as the hot new digital currency at the start of 2018, has suffered enormous losses over the past month. After the cryptocurrency hit an all-time high of $3.84 on January 4, it dipped to $1.16 by the end of the month. As of early Tuesday, each unit of Ripple was worth about $0.60. That's a decline of 83% off Ripple's peak.

As we've pointed out many times, financial gurus like Yale economist Robert Shiller and billionaire investor Warren Buffett have warned against Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. These digital currencies have no inherent value, the say—they are worth only what the market believes they are worth. And once the market loses faith in them, as seems to be the case lately, the bubble bursts and their value crashes.