Bitcoin faces worst price drop in five years; now trading at only $3,250

It's hard to believe that around this time last year Bitcoin prices were skyrocketing to nearly $20,000 in some countries. Now we are hearing that Bitcoin prices have dropped as low as $3,250 which has literally wiped out all gains from coins purchased this year.[caption id="attachment_4338471" align="alignnone" width="1280"]

Representational image. Pixabay[/caption]The price drop has been an astounding 40 percent from the last two weeks which makes this reportedly the worst price drop since April 2013.As per a report by The Verge, the price drops are likely the result of splitting Bitcoin into parallel currencies such as Bitcoin Cash. The fall of bitcoin has been quite dramatic since the start of 2018 with more than half of its near $20,000 value wiped out in January itself.  Last year the suspension of hard fork planned by major developers and investors proved a major catalyst to its breakneck rise.Since then cryptocurrency has been in free fall and never did recover. The report states that as per CoinDesk Bitcoin Cash and several other bitcoin forks have reported losses of more than 10 percent in a 24 hour period.Traders and market makers blamed bitcoin’s slide on heavy selling at leveraged exchanges in Asia such as Hong Kong-based OKEx and Bitmex. Few exchanges in the West lend bitcoin to traders, making the Asian venues popular with speculators.With inputs from Reuters