Bitcoin briefly dropped below $8K, for the first time since November, amid the broad cryptocurrency market sell-off
Biggest digital token takes losses since peak to about 60% — Rival coins including Ripple, Ether and Litecoin tumble — Bitcoin fell below $8,000 as a miserable 2018 continued …
Context & Ripple Effects
The drop below $8,000 extends the January slide, when Bitcoin had already briefly dipped below $10,000 alongside a 30% Ethereum loss and a 40% Ripple plunge — this takes the biggest token to roughly 60% below its peak just weeks later.
The corpus shows this is a repeating shape rather than a one-off: in June 2022 Bitcoin fell under $18,000, beneath its 2017 bull-cycle high, with ether below $1,000 and both down more than 70% from their prior November peak.
First-order effects
- Holders of the largest token are sitting on losses of about 60% from the peak, with the decline erasing all price gains since November.
- Ripple, Ether and Litecoin are falling in sympathy, so losses are hitting altcoin holders at least as hard as Bitcoin holders.
Second-order effects
- The synchronized tumble across rival coins confirms there is no defensive rotation inside crypto — capital exiting Bitcoin is leaving the asset class rather than moving down the cap stack.
- Each leg lower resets the reference point traders use: after $10,000 broke in January, $8,000 becomes the next psychological level whose failure invites further selling.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — roughly 60–70% peak-to-trough drawdowns recurring across cycles — crypto behaves as a single correlated risk asset whose cycles end in deep, market-wide retracements, not coin-specific corrections.
The trend: Cryptocurrency markets keep repricing as one correlated block, with each cycle's peak followed by broad 60%-plus drawdowns across Bitcoin and the major altcoins.