Bitcoin (BTC) faced one of its most brutal crashes ever in 2022, with the price of BTC dropping below $20,000 in June after peaking at $68,000 in 2021.
June 2022 became the worst month for Bitcoin since September 2011, as its monthly losses soared to 40%. The cryptocurrency also posted its biggest quarterly loss in 11 years.
However, the current market sell-off does not lead to a Bitcoin crash and bear market exclusively until 2022. In fact, Bitcoin has escaped its fair share of crypto winters since the first Bitcoin block, or bitcoin block, was mined in January 2009.
As we zoomed in on the Bitcoin price chart, Cointelegraph captured five of the most notable price drops in the history of the underlying cryptocurrency.
#1 Bear Market: Bitcoin Crash From $32 To $0.01 In 2011
Time to retest the previous high: 20 months (June 2011 – February 2013)
Bitcoin price broke its first major psychological mark at $1.00 in late April 2011 to start its first-ever rally to $32 on June 8, 2011. But the joy was short-lived, as the value of Bitcoin subsequently plummeted to a bottom of just $0.01 over the course of days. few.
The sharp sell-off was largely attributed to security issues at Mt.Gox, a Japanese crypto exchange that was trading the majority of bitcoin at the time. The exchange witnessed the theft of 850,000 bitcoins due to a security breach of its platform, which raised major concerns about the security of bitcoins stored on exchanges.
With BTC losing about 99% of its value in just a few days, the Bitcoin flash crash of June 2011 has become a huge part of Bitcoin history. The event opened for a long time before BTC price recovered to the previous high of $32 and only climbed to new highs in February 2013.
It is difficult to track the price of bitcoin prior to 2013 compared to more recent charts. Popular price tracking services and websites such as CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap do not track bitcoin prices prior to April 2013.
“Bitcoin was pretty much in its infancy before 2013 and there weren’t many places where Bitcoin was trading at that time,” Bobby Ong, chief operating officer of CoinGecko told Cointelegraph. He added that CoinGecko did not receive many requests for pre-2013 data, so it is a low priority for the platform.
Bear Market #2: Bitcoin Treasurys from $1000 to Below $200 in 2015
Time to retest the previous high: 37 months (November 2013 – January 2017)
According to BTC price data compiled by Cointelegraph, the bitcoin price reached $100 in mid-April 2013 and then continued to rise, briefly reaching $1,000 in November 2013.
Bitcoin entered a massive bear market shortly after breaking $1,000 for the first time in history, with the price of BTC dropping below $700 one month later. The price drop came when the Chinese central bank began cracking down on Bitcoin in late 2013, banning local financial institutions from handling BTC transactions.
The cryptocurrency continued to decline over the next two years, reaching a low of around $360 in April 2014, then dropping further to $170 in January 2015.
Bitcoin price chart from April 2013 to January 2017. Source: CoinGecko
The long 2014 winter of cryptocurrency became linked to the Mt.Gox crypto exchange hack, which halted all Bitcoin withdrawals in early February 2014. The exchange then suspended all trading and eventually filed for bankruptcy in Tokyo and the United States.
Some major financial authorities have also raised concerns about Bitcoin, with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission claiming power to “manipulate bitcoin prices” in late 2014.
General sentiment around bitcoin was mainly negative until August 2015, when the trend began a long-term reversal. Amidst a strong bull market, Bitcoin eventually returned to the $1,000 price mark in January 2017. This was the longest recovery period for the highest price ever in Bitcoin’s history.
Bear Market #3: Bitcoin Dropped Below $3,200 After Hitting $20,000 in December 2017
Time to retest the previous high: 36 months (December 2017 – December 2020)
After recovering to $1,000 in January 2017, Bitcoin continued to climb to $20,000 by the end of that year.
However, similar to Bitcoin’s previous historic peak of $1,000, the victory of $20,000 was short-lived, as Bitcoin subsequently plummeted and lost more than 60% of its value within two months.
The year 2018 was quickly referred to as the “crypto winter” as the bitcoin market continued to contract, with BTC dropping to around $3,200 in December 2018.
The crypto winter started with security issues at Coincheck, another Japanese cryptocurrency exchange. In January 2018, Coincheck suffered a massive hack that resulted in the loss of about $530 million in NEM (XEM) cryptocurrency.
The bear market escalated further as tech giants like Facebook and Google banned ICOs and token sales ads on their platforms in March and June 2018, respectively.
Efforts to regulate global cryptocurrency have contributed to the increase in bear
