Price of Bitcoin Drops to Nearly Two-Year Low

The price of bitcoin has fallen significantly this month with the value of the cryptocurrency reaching a 22-month low on Monday.

Bitcoin’s price has now dropped to $32,338.60 (30,627.89 euros) as of Monday evening, a slump which amounts to the cryptocurrency’s lowest value since July 2021.

The coin has dropped by nearly 15 percent so far in May, months after the price of bitcoin reached its peak of nearly $70,000 in November 2021.

The drop in value of what is likely the world’s most well-known cryptocurrency comes as the prices of cryptos in general have fallen.

Like bitcoin, ether, also referred to as ethereum, has dropped in value recently. The sharp drop in crypto prices has resulted in anxiety amongst traders and the public alike, as Forbes reports that the crypto market has lost a massive sum of over $200 billion due to recent drops in value.

Value of bitcoin, cryptocurrencies drops

The stock market in general has been volatile in recent weeks, as the Nasdaq has also experienced major losses. It fell by 1.5 percent last week, and was down by 2.3 percent on Monday, reflecting a broader trend of decline to due inflation.

Bitcoin’s recent slump is even more pronounced than the drop in value the cryptocurrency experienced in January of this year, as the markets responded to the threat of war in Ukraine.

At the time, the crypto traded at $33,650, a drop which amounted to a whopping $130 billion that disappeared from the crypto markets in a 24-hour period.

In recent years, bitcoin, which was once only adopted by a small group of “cypherpunks” who were dedicated to the digital currency, has become a household name.

According to Bitcoin’s website, Nakamoto developed Bitcoin from an idea of Wei Dai, a Chinese computer scientist.

“Bitcoin is the first implementation of a concept called ‘cryptocurrency,’ which was first described in 1998 by Wei Dai on the cypherpunks mailing list, suggesting the idea of a new form of money that uses cryptography to control its creation and transactions, rather than a central authority,” claims the Bitcoin website.

Once the embodiment of the anarchist’s ideal currency, one which was not linked to the state or any regulatory body, bitcoin is now traded internationally and has even become a legal tender in El Salvador and the Central African Republic.

Many early adopters of the coin have now made a fortune from the cryptocurrency, but bitcoin is not without its detractors. Many economists have argued that the coin may be tantamount to a Ponzi scheme while others predict that its value will not last.

Speaking to Greek Reporter, former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis stated that Bitcoin “can never be a currency, and it should never be a currency.”

“Bitcoiners celebrate Bitcoin because it is not state money, but if you take this to its natural conclusion, it means that it can never be a currency,” Varoufakis said, as you “cannot increase the supply of bitcoin because it is of fixed supply.”