coronavirus: Bitcoin goes wild as volatility jumps to 3-month high

By Joanna Ossinger


Bitcoin volatility is back to levels not seen since early November, with the bulls and bears sparring at the $10,000 price level.

Historical swings over the past 10 days on the Bitcoin-U.S. dollar pair surged to 65% on Wednesday, the highest level since Nov. 6, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Bitcoin plunged late in yesterday’s session, going from being little-changed at $10,168 to a drop of more than 8% to $9,327 about 45 minutes later. It recovered somewhat after that, and traded Thursday at $9,537 as of 8:25 a.m. in New York.

Bloomberg

“It could be a technical move with highly leveraged derivatives positions getting called,” said Emmanuel Goh, who runs crypto-derivatives tracker Skew. He noted that some long perpetual swap positions got liquidated on Bitmex around the time of the Wednesday’s drop.

Cryptocurrencies are known for their volatility, and the largest of them has continued to live up to that reputation. Bitcoin is still up more than…