Bitcoin, the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency, continued its slide on Thursday to go below $60K and reach its lowest price since early May. Other major cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Solana followed suit.
Bitcoin already lost around 6% of its value in the past week and crashed all the way down to $57,110.90 at one point before slightly recovering. It sent the coin more than 20% below its record price of $73K in March.
The driving factor for Bitcoin’s dive is the concern that the upcoming repayments from the defunct exchange Mt. Gox will flood the market and drive the price even lower.
Mt. Gox is scheduled to start repaying Bitcoin that was frozen for a decade due to a hack to its creditors in July. Many of these creditors are expected to cash in on their holdings to take advantage of the fact that their investment is now 10,000% more valuable.
“There is an anticipation that some of those original buyers of bitcoin will start to sell on the market, which is a fairly big chunk,” Tony Sycamore, a market analyst at IG, told Reuters.
Ethereum plunged more than 4% on Thursday to trade at around $3,150, while Solana is down 7%. Meme coins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu Coin recorded losses of more than 10%.