Investing.com - Bitcoin edged lower on Thursday, slipping back below the psychologically important $8,000 level as investors took a breather after a rally that saw it nearly double since the start of April.
At 08:43 AM ET (12:43 GMT) Bitcoin was down 1.1% to $7,882.5 on the Investing.com index, having pulled back from Tuesday’s peaks of $8,323.9, the highest level since July 2018.
Other major cryptocurrencies were mixed, with Ethereum up 8.2% to $250.67, XRP down 3.6% to 0.41214 and Litecoin adding 1.2% to trade at $93.93.
The total crypto market cap, which stands at about $247 billion and is often used to gauge demand, has more than tripled since its December trough.
The recent price increase in Bitcoin may have been exaggerated by capital flight from some of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
Withdrawals from troubled cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex, as well as trading platforms BitMEX, Binance and Kraken have exceeded inflows by around $622 million in the five days to Tuesday, according to the report, which said some crypto investors may have shifted funds from other tokens into Bitcoin, given its relative liquidity and stability.
New York's attorney-general has alleged that the companies that control Bitfinex and its affiliated stablecoin Tether engaged in a cover-up to hide an alleged $850 million loss of co-mingled client and corporate funds.
The allegations came after a report published last year looking at Tether's role in the digital currency boom concluded that Tether was used to manipulate cryptocurrency prices, and that market manipulation accounted for half of the runup.