After a brief surge in bitcoin’s value at the start of the week following a major upgrade to its network, the cryptocurrency has plunged to below $60,000 on Thursday.
Several other leading cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum (ether), Solana (SOL), and Cardano (ada), as well as the meme coins dogecoin and shib inu, have also dropped in value this week.
Most of the top 10 cryptocurrencies are down by between 6 to 10 per cent, with a flash crash on Tuesday coming less than a week after several of them hit all-time highs.
Bitcoin’s price has held firm above $58,000, bolstered by the rollout of the long-awaited Taproot update over the weekend, which improves both the privacy and security of BTC.
The price falls wiped more than a hundred billion dollars from the overall crypto market, though it remains above $2.5 trillion.