Bitcoin is sinking below $ 30,000 for the first time since January

The price of bitcoin has fallen below $ 30,000, eliminating almost all of the year’s gains, with a regulatory crackdown that put the world’s leading digital asset under persistent pressure.

Bitcoin fell as much as 12% on Tuesday to $ 28,824 in the last stretch of a sale that has brought the cryptocurrency down more than 50% from its April high of nearly $ 65,000.

The fall of bitcoin has cascaded to many other parts of the digital asset market and hit “high currencies” such as ether and dogecoin.

A crackdown on global authorities trying to curb the largely unregulated market has gained momentum in recent weeks.

China, which was one of the most important digital currency markets in the world, has banned the extraction of bitcoins in major provinces, an essential process needed to register and verify transactions and create new currencies. The country’s central bank on Monday warned several of its large state-owned banks and Jack Ma’s Alipay “Research and identify” bank accounts that facilitate the trading of cryptocurrencies and block the corresponding transactions.

Fundstrat, a New York-based boutique research house, said the sale, which began Monday, was “largely driven by China’s regulatory pressures.”

Monday’s trading volumes on major stock markets tracked by Goldman Sachs rose to the highest level in about four weeks.

Global regulators have called this month for cryptocurrencies to carry the toughest banking capital rules of any asset, arguing that the requirements to keep Bitcoin and similar tokens should be much higher than those of conventional stocks and bonds.

Bitcoin last fell near that level in May, when it combined a crackdown on mining and coin use in China and a recognition of bitcoin industry champion Elon Musk environmental impact, sent the price down. That episode showed that when cryptography prices fall, the hides below it can be fast.

Shares of software company MicroStrategy, which has bought large amounts of bitcoin, fell more than 10 percent in New York on Tuesday. The group has bought the coins at an overall cost of $ 2.7 billion, reflecting an average price of just over $ 26,000 each. he said Monday. He recently bought about $ 500 million of bitcoin at a price of about $ 37,600.