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Bitcoin is proving that cryptocurrencies can erase wealth as fast as they create it.

Its January slide knocked US$44.2 billion off the US$200 billion in market value generated in all of last year, the biggest one-month loss in dollar terms in the short history of digital assets.

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“Once we got to US$10,000, crypto had adopted this Teflon persona of late that it’s always going to find a base and go back up again,” Stephen Innes, head of Asia Pacific trading at Oanda, said by phone from Singapore. “When we’re talking in the realm of riskier assets, and something shaves off 50 perc ent of its value, it tells me there’s going to be an extension lower. The sad thing is a lot of people will be burned, because they will continue to buy dips.”