The price of Bitcoin has dropped below the $7,000 mark, down five percent in the last 24 hours. The current price of Bitcoin is $6,900.

After its market crashes on March 12 and 13, Bitcon's price had been steadily building back up. But after breaking through the $7,000 mark for a sustained period of three days, it has fallen back below it in just a matter of hours, according to TradingView.

Bitcoin price breaks down
Bitcoin price has dropped below $7,000. Image: TradingView.

The rest of the crypto market has followed, with many cryptocurrencies showing heavy losses. In the top 10 coins by market cap, the prices of Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV are both down by more than 10%. XRP is proving the most resilient, matching Bitcoin's five percent drop.

XRP price drops below 20 cents
The price of XRP has dropped below $0.20. Image: TradingView.

Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV both had their halvings in the last couple of days. This reduced the supply of newly minted coins on each blockchain in half, cutting the revenue of miners in half.

While the Bitcoin Cash hash rate—the computing power of miners keeping the network secure—has dropped significantly following its halving, Bitcoin SV's has stayed steady.

As Decrypt reported yesterday, this means it's now possible to launch a 51% attack—temporarily taking over the network—on Bitcoin Cash for less than the price of a single Bitcoin. This would let an attacker censor transactions, and temporarily roll back transactions.

In comparison, it costs $556,000 to attack the Bitcoin network for an hour, according to crypto51.

Outside of the top ten, the only coin showing any significant gains in Waves, ranked 48, a high-performance blockchain platform. It is up four percent today. But can it defy the market pressure for long?

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.