The world's most popular and expensive cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, slumped below the $50,000 mark for the first time since early-March, 2021, in fear of President Joe Biden's upcoming tax plans. As per reports, the , as the U.S government is looking to double taxes on capital gains to 39.6 percent, from the previous 19.8 percent for investors earning $1 million or more.
Bitcoin slumped 10.3 percent to $48.266 at the time of publishing as investors booked profits by pulling out of the cryptocurrency en masse. The slow economic recovery due to the pandemic is also a contributor to the dip in the market. Bitcoin faced a 15 percent loss this week but still remains up 65 percent since the start of 2021.
The Biden administration's tax plans also hit markets as smaller rivals such as Ether, XRP, Wink and Dogecoin all fell more than 10 percent dragging the cryptocurrency market to month lows prompting investors to book profits dragging the market further down.
Fear of Further Slump
The fear of further slump comes at a time when governments across the world including the United Kingdom, China, India among others are creating regulatory bodies to start their own legal cryptocurrency.
UK's Chancellor Rishi Sunak sent guidelines to The Bank of England (BoE) to look at a case of 'Britcoin', making it a centralized government controlled online currency, sidestepping the existing cryptocurrencies in the market.
"We're launching a new task force between the Treasury and the BoE to coordinate exploratory work on a potential central bank digital currency (CBDC)," Mr Sunak told at a financial industry conference.
Bill Gates Bets On Bitcoin's Complete Collapse
The slump in Bitcoin's market value also comes at a time when Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates gave a statement to the Express UK early this week that he bets on the complete collapse of Bitcoin as the transactions do nothing to change the world and is one innovation that the world can survive without.
He also told the Wall Street Journal: ''The way cryptocurrency works today allows for certain criminal activities. It would be good to get rid of that.'' In an earlier interview with CNBC he had said: ''I do not own bitcoin. I'm not short bitcoin, so I've taken a neutral view. I do think moving money into a more digital form and getting transaction costs down, that's something the Gates Foundation does in developing countries.''
