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Bitcoin Bulls Take to Twitter for Reassurance After Crypto Crash

Largest digital token on pace for worst weekly drop since 2018.

Bitcoin Bulls Take to Twitter for Reassurance After Crypto Crash
Mike Caldwell, of Casascius, displays a Bitcoin that was just made for a photograph in Sandy, Utah. (Photographer: George Frey/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- As Bitcoin prices took a plunge this week, crypto evangelists were quick to take to Twitter to soothe frayed nerves and expound on why the drop is nothing to be concerned about.

The swiftness of the declines took many by surprise and dozens of tweets were quickly dispatched in support of the nascent and highly volatile market. There’s no reason to panic, they said. Buy now and see it go to $50,000, they said. The worst thing you can do is miss the next wave, they said.

But this week’s price swings were not for the faint of heart. The average daily change for Bitcoin over the past week is more than 4.4%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with a move of about 0.7% for gold in the same period -- an asset class Bitcoin is frequently compared with because they’re both seen as a store of value.

Bitcoin Bulls Take to Twitter for Reassurance After Crypto Crash

“Bitcoin was seemingly on the path to redemption this year,” Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research, wrote in a note this week. But this week’s drop is a “big” one, “even for that asset,” he said.

A string of issues and a lack of catalysts to drive prices higher this week weighed on the crypto market. Bitcoin dropped below $8,000 for the first time since June and is on pace to post its worst week since November 2018, with a weekly decline of about 20%. That’s wiped out about $40 billion off its market capitalization, according to data from Coinmarketcap.com. And peer coins, including Ether and XRP, also sold off.

As is often the case in the cryptosphere, ascertaining good reasons for the drop in prices is difficult and investors and skeptics alike struggled to explain the moves. Some cited a lukewarm reception to the first physically deliverable Bitcoin futures contracts, while others pointed to yet another disappointment on the Bitcoin ETF front.

Yet the crypto universe has some of the most steadfast and ardent of investors and believers. So steadfast, in fact, that a new term had to be invented to explain their devotion. And whatever the cause for this week’s drop, there was no dearth of reasons to keep Holding On For Dear Life.

Here’s a sampling of what some other market-watchers and crypto investors were saying on Twitter:

--With assistance from Kenneth Sexton.

To contact the reporters on this story: Vildana Hajric in New York at vhajric1@bloomberg.net;Molly Smith in New York at msmith604@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeremy Herron at jherron8@bloomberg.net, Dave Liedtka, Brendan Walsh

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.