In the last several days, Bitcoin has suffered a grueling sell-off that has seen price capitulate to as low as $5,600 before finding a temporary bounce. Unfortunately, things have gotten worse for BTC as prices plunge even further in overnight trading.

The drastic crash in the Bitcoin market has so far triggered liquidations worth about $487M.

Meanwhile, Ethereum is down by more than 30% over the past 24-hours as the impact of coronavirus takes its toll on the crypto market.

Let us have a closer look at how top cryptocurrencies fared in this week’s market analysis.

Bitcoin Crashes Below $5,600

Bitcoin succumbed to a staggering market sell-off with a 27% move to the downside with price sliding momentarily below $5,900 on Thursday. The world’s largest cryptocurrency found itself in uncharted territory with prices at their lowest point since April 2019.

A bounce finally came as expected as traders attempted to ‘buy the dip’, bringing prices to above the $6000 level. However, momentum has since shifted to the downside, with BTC currently trading at $5321.04.

The price crash has been mostly linked to rising fears surrounding the deadly coronavirus, with several countries locking down entire regions to halt the spread of the virus.

Whales also seem to have contributed to the price drop, with Whale Alert detecting two consecutive transactions yesterday in BTC worth about $21.7M from Binance exchange.

Panic has surely crept into crypto markets, with BTC price targets starting to emerge at $4,850 if the bearish trend carries on.

Ethereum Suffers A Staggering 30% Sell-Off

The Bitcoin sell-off has been largely reflected across most top crypto assets, with ETH experiencing a 30 percent drop to the $125 level of support at the time of writing.

According to recent data from Nic Carter, the co-founder of CoinMetrics, yesterday was ETH’s worst day in history, with the second-largest cryptocurrency losing 43% on the day, clearly marking its worst performance ever.

The last time it dropped even remotely close to this hard was amid 2017’s tumultuous uptrend, which was marked by large bouts of volatility due to global news and technical developments regarding cryptocurrencies.

ETH is now down by more almost 48% from its $290 high in Feb, which has erased the gains made by the rally since the turn of the year.

Ripple XRP

Cryptocurrency Ripple (XRP) is trading at 0.150 at the time of writing, with XRP quotes trading below the moving average with a period of 55. This indicates a bearish trend on Ripple.

Prices have gone down from the area between the signal lines, indicating pressure from asset sellers. In the near future, we can expect an attempt to boost the token and test the resistance level close to the level of ​​0.1745.

XRP/USD currently implies an attempt to test the resistance level near the area of ​​0.1755, where we can expect the cryptocurrency to continue to fall with a potential target at the level of 0.1045.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH)

In the last few weeks, BCH has experienced an astounding fall from grace, plummeting from just below $500 to the $160 level as bears regain power.

BCH prices dropped closer to the bottom of the $120 to $140 range on Thursday, before buying emerged. However, the bulls have since been unable to push the price beyond the moving averages, which shows a lack of BCH demand at higher levels.

The bears are likely to attempt a breakdown of $120 level once again. If successful, BCH can fall to $105, where it will likely find strong support. BCH prices are on the $167.46 mark at the time of writing.

Authors Thoughts

The focus this week seems to be mainly on BTC’s fall off a cliff that has stunned investors and triggered mass liquidation.

However, it should be noted that the news background is favorable for Bitcoin. For example, the German Federal Office for Financial Supervision (BaFin) has just recently classified BTC as a financial instrument. Plus, the largest crypto-insurance operator Lloyd’s of London, in partnership with Coincover, launched a new solution for insuring digital assets in hot wallets.

Therefore, we should expect a “new wave” of traders and investors as the markets could soon warm up.

Crypto miners are also not slowing down, with the hashrate of the BTC network reaching a record high of 136 EH/s last week.

All this affects the forecasts of analysts, with many expecting the BTC/USD pair to grow to the $9,500-$10,000 zones in the near future.