Bitcoin on the rocks as the year comes to a close

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While Bitcoin, and cryptocurrency in general, has had quite the breakout year in 2017, hitting the mainstream in ways that probably no one would have imagined even a couple of years ago, it seems that 2018 is going to start out just a little different.

At the start of 2017, Bitcoin had a value of $998. It hit $20,000 earlier this week, which means even the babies that jumped in just this year made a ton of money, let alone those who invested early (Bitcoin was first introduced in 2009).

But Bitcoin, along with just about every other relevant cryptocurrency, crashed early today: The price fell as much as 23% at its lowest on Coinbase.

It bottomed out at just under $12,000 in the earliest hours this morning, which means that $4,000 of Bitcoin value simply disappeared. This was the highest percentage loss, by far, that Bitcoin has seen since the start of the year.

John Russell, TechCrunch writer and cryptocurrency enthusiast, tweeted (and hit follow for more info):

But the funniest part, or most-frustrating part, depending on how much you have invested and how much you care about the (potential) future of currency, is that these cryptocurrencies continue to go up and down and round and round and no one seems exactly sure why or how it happens; there is no real indication as to why the crash happened today, just like no one seems to know exactly why the same cryptocurrencies have recently been skyrocketing in value.

But that hasn’t stopped the aggressive push into the mainstream: Global banking giant Goldman just yesterday announced that they are setting up a trading desk dedicated to cryptocurrencies.

We’ll have more for you as it comes.