Cryptocurrency drops below $5000 for first time in 13 months

The cryptocurrency has plunged nearly 14 per cent over the past 24 hours to trade at $US4843 early on Tuesday, nearly 25 per cent down from a week ago.

It came amid a broader sell-off of that wiped nearly $US24 billion off the market capitalisation of more than 2000 tokens tracked by Coinmarketcap.

Bitcoin hasn’t traded at $US5000 since October 12 last year when it briefly passed through the milestone during its meteoric run-up to an all-time high of $US20,000.

The digital currency has hovered around the $US6000 mark for most of 2018 after the entire cryptocurrency market crashed at the start of the year, but many enthusiasts believed it would not drop below $US5000 again.

Ripple, the second largest cryptocurrency, was down nearly 6 per cent at the time of writing, while ethereum had lost nearly 16 per cent.

The latest sell-off was largely driven by fears last Thursday’s so-called “hard fork” in bitcoin cash —…