Explained: What is Bitcoin and why its price has been falling?

Bitcoin witnessed a massive fall of nearly 30% after the China Banking Association issued a warning to the member banks regarding the risks associated with the digital currency.

In a matter of just 24 hours, Bitcoin lost about $70 billion in the market and it has lost almost 38% of its value since April 13, as per Coindesk.

Besides that, Tesla’s decision to not accept Bitcoin as payment for cars and tighter regulation of digital currencies had put immense pressure on Bitcoin. 

Let’s take a quick look at Bitcoin:

Bitcoin is a digital currency that is not tied to a bank or government and allows users to spend money anonymously. It is created by those who mine the coins by lending computing power to check others' transactions. A lot of companies and businesses take Bitcoin as payment.

Bitcoins are basically lines of computer code that are digitally signed each time they travel from one owner to the next. 

These coins are required to be stored in a digital wallet, either online through an exchange like Coinbase, or offline on a hard drive using specialized software. As per Coinbase, there are about 18.7 million Bitcoins in circulation and only 21 million will ever exist.

Bitcoin was launched in 2009 by a person or group of people operating under the name Satoshi Nakamoto. 

Why did Bitcoin prices fall?

Chinese Banking Association released a statement wherein it said that financial institutions should “resolutely refrain" from giving services using digital currencies because of their volatility.

This eventually led to a sharp fall in the Bitcoin prices and it was down more than 7% at around $40,310 per coin. Most cryptocurrencies lost between 7% and 22% of their value and shares of Coinbase dropped 5.4%.

Does Elon Musk play a vital role in volatility?

Elon Musk owned Tesla had invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin and it started taking Bitcoin as payment. Musk also tweeted about Dogecoin which further surged the prices of the digital currency. 

But Musk changed its decision and recently Tesla said it would stop taking Bitcoin as payments, citing reasons that this could have catastrophic impact on the environment. This led to the downfall of prices below $50,000.

However, Tesla said that it would continue to invest in Bitcoin.