Bitcoin Loses Half of Its Value

The price of Bitcoin dropped below $10,000 on Wednesday.

Bitcoin is the world’s best-known cryptocurrency. But, it has lost half of its value from the record price set last month.

The digital currency was valued at over $19,000 last December. On Wednesday, Bloomberg financial service said the price dropped to about $9,600.

Charles Hayter is a founder of Cryptocompare, a business that owns cryptocurrencies. He told Reuters, “There is a lot of panic in the market. People are selling.” He said the fall in the value of bitcoin is related to uncertainty about whether governments will try to set rules for its use.

Bitcoin is different from national currencies, which are supported by governments and central banks. Bitcoin is stored as a line of computer code. It is not printed on paper or something you can hold like a coin.

Computers keep a global record of how each bitcoin is exchanged so that ownership and transactions can be confirmed.

Last week, the South Korean government said that it is considering measures to ban trading of cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin. Officials also are expected to debate the rise of bitcoin at the upcoming G20 summit, a meeting of the world’s major economic powers, in Argentina in March.

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