Bitcoin dipped another 5.16 percent on Saturday (May 30), falling now to $33,849.47, Reuters reported.
The cryptocurrency had lost around $1,842 in value from its previous close.
Another popular cryptocurrency, Ether, fell as well, dropping 6.26 percent to $2,262 on Saturday. That coin lost $151.11 from its previous close.
Bitcoin was riding high early in the year, with an all-time record of $64,895.22 in early 2021. However, it has suffered a 47.8 percent drop since then.
The past week has seen somewhat of a less volatile turn for bitcoin, but losses have been steep — there has been a 38 percent drop in value, according to the report. That comes from increasing regulatory pressure on crypto. The levels bitcoin is trading at now are similar to those seen last January, which ended up being around half its peak value later on.
The volatility in cryptocurrency has been a talking point for some time and it’s not known whether bitcoin will be the reigning champion of what people will want to use for payments.
As of May 24, bitcoin’s value was sitting at $718 billion. Ether followed, with $283 billion. Ether was up more than 200 percent at the beginning of the year. Bitcoin was only up 30 percent by comparison, and the report noted that there was a greater wealth of enthusiasm in Ether among hardcore crypto enthusiasts.
While bitcoin and ether are both fundamentally the same type of direct transactions without the need for a central bank or transaction system, but there are key differences. Bitcoin is more of a play on price. It has some ways to use it as a store of value or as commerce. And ether is generally a digital coin running on Ethereum, a programmable blockchain.
Ether could end up gaining steam as bitcoin comes under fire by authorities looking to limit crypto. For instance, China has targeted bitcoin with ways to curb mining and trading, while the U.S. Treasury Department has said it plans to require crypto transactions above $10,000 to be reported to the IRS.
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