Is Bitcoin in Freefall? Traders watched as Bitcoin (BTC) fell to the lowest levels for 2018 this morning after quite a large sell off in the cryptocurrency market. At the time of writing this article, Bitcoin is sitting at $5,755 after hitting a low point of $5,665.

Incredibly, Bitcoin has opened the session at $6,295. However, even with the slight recovery, this represents more than 7.7% decline in just 24 hours.

Bitcoin in Freefall Below $6k

Needless to say, Alt Coins were also impacted by this decline with a huge sell off in some cases. According to CoinMarketCap, Basic Attention Token (BAT) is one of the most notable losers with 20.25% shaved off yesterday’s price.

With more than $23 billion disappearing from the crypto markets in just 24 hours, the markets are back to trading sideways. Also, many traders predict further declines across the board and the buying volume is low even in spite of dropping so hard.

At the same time, there are just as many analysts who feel that this significant decline is due to manipulation. More specifically, it’s widely thought that “Bitcoin whales” are pushing down the price of cryptocurrency down in order to liquidate weak sellers.

Implications of the Bitcoin Cash Fork?

Moreover, these same analysts are asking “why?” in terms of the sudden drop. After all, there was no catalyst for the decline and the markets had been trading sideways for the previous months.

With the Bitcoin Cash fork due to take place shortly, it has also been suggested that those involved have sold their Bitcoin in lieu of the fork. That being said, this is merely speculation and unlikely the cause of this mornings movement.

At the time of writing, the cryptocurrency market cap is $187 Billion.