Crypto guru Barry Silbert used the weekend selloff to build up his portfolio
The crypto selloff deepened over the weekend as major digital currencies crashed to fresh lows.
Bitcoin BTCUSD, +1.85% the world’s largest digital currency, dipped below $3,500 on Saturday for the first time since September 2017, losing as much as 15% on the day and extending its monthly loss to nearly 40%.
After a brief reprieve on Sunday, the selloff has resumed on Monday with a single bitcoin BTCUSD, +1.85% falling another 10%, heading back toward its Saturday low. It was trading at $3,639.90, down 10.1% since Sunday at 5 p.m. Eastern time on the Kraken crypto exchange.
Once worth close to $20,000, bitcoin, amid its selloff, has industry players asking just how much one of the digital coins is actually worth.
“There is nothing normal nor positive about this type of price movement so beware of false prophets selling soothsayer story lines and never get anchored to a price. Just because BTC is trading below $5,000, $4,000 or $3,000 for that matter, doesn’t mean bitcoin is undervalued even more so when BTC offers up no intrinsic store of value,” wrote Stephen Innes, head of Asia Pacific trading at Oanda.
However, Barry Silbert, an early bitcoin adopter and the founder of Digital Currency Group, has no doubt what some digital currencies are worth. Silbert said he used the weekend capitulation to add to his portfolio.
Altcoins — the group of more than 2,000 coins other than bitcoin — moved lower in step with bitcoin on Monday. Ether ETHUSD, +0.36% was down 6.9% at $107.91, Litecoin LTCUSD, +2.07% was lower by 5.7% at $29.60, XRP XRPUSD, +0.67% had lost 6.2% to 35 cents, and Bitcoin Cash BCHUSD, +1.48% was down 3.2% at $176.40.
In futures trading, both contracts finished well lower on Monday. The Cboe Global Markets December contract XBTZ8, +0.89% finished down 12.9% at $3,647.50 and the CME Group November contract BTCX8, +2.64% closed Monday down 13.5% at $3,625.