Bitcoin's Big Wipeout Erased $46 Billion of Value Last Month

(Bloomberg) -- Bitcoin is proving that cryptocurrencies can erase wealth as fast as they create it.

Its January slide knocked $46.1 billion off the $200 billion in market value generated in all of last year, according to historical pricing data from Coinmarketcap.com. The drop is the biggest one-month loss in dollar terms in the short history of digital assets.

“Once we got to $10,000, crypto had adopted this Teflon persona of late that it’s always going to find a base and go back up again,” Stephen Innes, head of Asia Pacific trading at Oanda, said by phone from Singapore. “When we’re talking in the realm of riskier assets, and something shaves off 50 percent of its value, it tells me there’s going to be an extension lower. The sad thing is a lot of people will be burned, because they will continue to buy dips.”

Since reaching a peak of almost $20,000 in early December after the introduction of futures contracts on regulated exchanges in the U.S., a series of negative news has buffeted Bitcoin and rival cryptocurrencies, with losses intensifying since the start of 2018.

A record $500 million heist of an alternate coin at Japanese exchange Coincheck Inc. on Jan. 26 upped the pressure on regulators to probe business practices within the largely unregulated industry, while authorities in trading hotbed South Korea continue to debate more serious measures including a ban on such exchanges.

Innes sees the cryptocurrency tumbling further to the $5,000-to-$6,000 range before eventually recovering to $10,000-to-$15,000. That road will almost certainly be bumpy given global authorities are only going to increase their scrutiny of the cryptocurrency industry from here on, he said.

For more on cryptocurrencies:
Digital Coins Tumble in January Amid Facebook, Tether Concerns
S. Korea Uncovers 638b Won of Illegal Crypto Related FX Trading
Crypto Exchange Bitfinex, Tether Are Said Subpoenaed by CFTC
How to Launder $500 Million in Digital Currency: QuickTake Q&A
Did Bitcoin Just Burst? How It Compares to History’s Big Bubbles

To contact the reporters on this story: Eric Lam in Hong Kong at elam87@bloomberg.net, Matt Turner in Hong Kong at mturner107@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Christopher Anstey at canstey@bloomberg.net, Todd White, Cormac Mullen

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.