Bitcoin Falls by Over 5 Percent After Setting New All-Time High; Ether, Ripple and Dogecoin Slip as Well

Bitcoin value fell by over 5 percent on Thursday after the cryptocurrency reached a new all-time high on Thursday, October 20, buoyed by the launch of the first Bitcoin (BTC)-linked exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the US. The world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation closed Thursday's trade at Rs. 47,21,768 (roughly $62,756) marking a dip of 5.71 percent. Friday's trade does look promising for investors with BTC opening at Rs. 49,56,235 (roughly $65,872) on Indian exchange CoinSwitch Kuber and moving to Rs. 49,62,618 (roughly $65,957) at the time of writing.

Bitcoin's dip also saw most popular altcoins suffer a plunge too. Gadgets 360's cryptocurrency price tracker shows that Ether, fell by a tiny 0.03 percent on Thursday although other crypto-assets fell by larger margins. Ether is currently trading at Rs. 3,25,301 (roughly $4,323) and is already up by 0.7 percent from its Friday opening of Rs. 3,23,002 (roughly $4,293).

Cardano, Ripple, Polkadot, Litecoin and Dogecoin all marked dips.

Chainlink appeared to be the only altcoin that charted major gains of 4.45 percent on Thursday and has begun strong on Friday too.

The newest Bitcoin rally has had a considerable mark on the market already. With the global crypto market achieving a $2.6-trillion (roughly Rs. 1,94,45,270 crore) valuation for the first time, crypto investors in India have expanded their portfolios too. Exchanges in India include CoinSwitch Kuber, WazirX, CoinDCX, and BuyUCoin all clocked an increase in trade volumes by over 100 percent from Wednesday, through Thursday.

There was a rare technical glitch occurrence too on Thursday where the price of Bitcoin rapidly plunged by about 87 percent on US exchange Binance' website. The value of the crypto-asset had suddenly sunk to as low as $8,200 (roughly Rs. 6,16,968) from roughly $65,000 (roughly Rs. 48,90,600). The glitch was apparently caused by a bug in the trading algorithm of one of the institutional traders at the exchange.

Meanwhile, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has been clearing away his collection of dog-themed Dogecoin copycats. A report points out that in recent times Buterin has reportedly sold off around $4.3 million (roughly over Rs. 32 crore) worth of dog-themed meme-coins from his wallets.