One asset is shockingly stable during the market sell-off this week — bitcoin
The cryptocurrency known for its volatility has been uncharacteristically quiet this week, trading in the $6,500 range as stock markets plummeted. Bitcoin is up 1 percent for the week, while the Dow has dropped 3 percent with wild swings throughout the week. Bitcoin’s insulation from broader market wreckage is relatively new — earlier in October $18 billion was wiped off its market cap in a matter of days as the Dow saw its worst day since February. As U.S. stock markets went haywire this week, the major cryptocurrency known for giving investors whiplash was surprisingly calm.Bitcoin is up 1 percent for the week as of Friday afternoon, according to data from CoinDesk, and remained in the $6,500 range without much fanfare.Equity markets were a different story — the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down almost 3 percent for the week. It ended 500 points higher on Thursday after plummeting a day earlier, then on Friday dropped more than 500 points after some disappointing quarterly results from key tech companies. It later recovered some of that drop.Fears of an ongoing trade war and rising interest rates added to the sell-off. But Bitcoin’s insulation from the market wreckage is relatively new.Earlier in October, uncertainty around stock markets bled into cryptocurrencies as the Dow dropped as much as 1,300 points in two days, its biggest sell-off since February. Bitcoin dropped 6 percent as the total cryptocurrency market during that time lost $18 billion of its value.
