The cryptocurrency market has been in a freefall in the days following Elon Musk’s announcement that Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin as a payment option for cars. Bitcoin, still the most valuable and popular cryptocurrency, briefly dropped to a low of just over $30,000 today before rebounding to around $39,000/coin.
Earlier this year, Tesla made a big Bitcoin purchase and announced that it would accept the digital asset as a payment option for vehicle purchases. Only a couple of months later, however, Musk reversed that decision and announced on Twitter that Tesla would no longer accept the cryptocurrency over concerns about the fossil fuels used to mine it.
This kicked off widespread chaos in the crypto market, which has seen digital coin valuation steadily plummet over the past several days. Bitcoin is one of the coins hit hardest by this drop, plunging from its approximately $59,000 value on May 10 to a 24-hour low today of $30,681, according to CoinMarketCap. The digital asset rebounded within hours, climbing back up to an unsteady value of around $39,000/coin.
Though some cryptocurrencies, primarily low-value altcoins, have seen small upticks in valuation, the majority of digital assets have dipped substantially over the past week, including Ethereum, promising privacy coin Monero, Ripple, the meme coin Dogecoin, Maker, Compound, Dash, Litecoin, and others.
The massive crypto sell-out caused troubles for Coinbase, an exchange that enables users to quickly buy, trade, and sell digital coins using a phone app. The exchange experienced a partial outage yesterday, preventing some users from logging in and making it difficult to withdrawal Ethereum. The service was restored today.