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Investors hold on as Bitcoin struggles to survive Turkey’s hammer

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LONG READ... CBN CRYPTOCURRENCY BAN: What is the noise about?

Turkey threw a spanner in the works of bitcoin following weeks of bullish run by the most popular cryptocurrency – the surge came to an end this weekend, as value of bitcoin crashed to its lowest in three weeks.

For the past week, bitcoin had been trading above $60,000, reaching its highest $64,516 per bitcoin four days ago. At the time, the market capitalisation of the digital asset had risen to $1.20 trillion.

The surge in bitcoin had become consistent following the entry of global corporations like Tesla, Mastercard, Visa and many other institutional investors, who made bitcoin a major asset in their portfolio.

However, as the world continues to marvel at the growth of bitcoin’s market value against government opposition in countries like Nigeria and China, a spanner was thrown into its works by the Turkish government.

How did Turkey hurt bitcoin?

Turkey central bank banned use of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for payments or other transactions during the weekend, citing non-recoverable losses tied to the risk in trading digital assets.

“Payment service providers will not be able to develop business models in a way that crypto assets are used directly or indirectly in the provision of payment services and electronic money issuance.”

READ ALSO: Bitcoin hits $64,516, breaks Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google trillion-dollar record

The central bank of Turkey added, “Their use in payments may cause non-recoverable losses for the parties to the transactions … and include elements that may undermine the confidence in methods and instruments used currently in payments.”

This decision by the government singlehandedly hurt bitcoin, sending it into the dip. The ban crash the value of the crypto by 10.62 percent in the last 24hours. Sending bitcoin price $55,000.

Bitcoin’s current price is $54,291, with its market capitalisation put at $1.01 trillion. This means about $190 billion was lost by holders of bitcoin in the last four days when compared to its highest of $1.20 trillion.

Despite the crash in price, some holders are tightening their grip on the dip as they choose to remain in the dump, while others are considering buying the dip to position themselves for future hike in bitcoin when it rebounds and shed the pressure Turkey ban placed on cryptocurrencies.

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