Bitcoin price plummets below $25K following Celsius freeze

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

On Sunday night, the Celsius Network abruptly announced a "pause" on withdrawals and transfers due to extreme market conditions. The price of the CEL token, which was worth $7 a year ago, fell to 21 cents as markets in Asia opened on Monday.

The prices of other cryptocurrencies have also fallen. The total market cap of all of the assets in the tracker fell from its peak of $3 trillion in November.

Image: Coinbase

Since the Celsius news came out, the price of the digital currency has fallen by about $2,000. The last time the price of the digital currency was that low was in December 2020. Today is the 12th week in a row that the slide has gone on from $49,000.

After the Celsius announcement, the price of ether dropped from $1,355 to about $1,238, a decrease of about 14 percent. It reached $4,891 on November 9th last year.

This is only impacting the Bitcoin network. You can still withdraw Bitcoin on other networks like BEP-20.



Likely this is going to take a bit longer to fix than my initial estimate. More updates soon. Thanks for your patience and understanding

— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) June 13, 2022

The major trading exchange has paused withdrawals in the midst of falling prices. The freeze was caused by a stuck transaction, according to the CEO. He initially said the pause would be over in 30 minutes, but later said it would take a bit longer.

Before the markets opened on Monday, the price of the shares of the company dropped by 20 percent, according to CNBC. Over the last year, the price of its shares has fallen.

According to data from Bitdeer and others, old mining rigs are at risk of shutting down at current prices and mining difficulty. The cost of electricity used to power the rigs would make it unprofitable to operate there. Even if prices keep falling, newer generation hardware can still return a profit, but if the price falls below $22,000, the S17+ could become unprofitable.