The price of bitcoin fell below $4,000 for the first time today since September 27th of last year.

At around 16:20 UTC Saturday, the world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization sank to an average price across exchanges of $3,970.43, a figure 7.5 percent lower than the day's opening price of $4,298.83, according to Coindesk’s Bitcoin Price Index. 

At $3,745.89 as of press time, BTC’s price is now down more than $1,700, or 30 percent, in the past seven days alone and 81 percent from its all-time high of roughly $20,000, set back in December.

While several well-known cryptocurrencies are posting positive 24-hour price developments when valued against BTC, including the likes of XRP (XRP), ethereum (ETH) and dash (DASH) which are all up more than 2 percent in BTC terms, the broader market is still experiencing substantial losses vs. the USD.

Out of the world’s 10 largest cryptocurrencies, bitcoin cash (BCH), stellar (XLM), monero (XMR) and cardano (ADA) are the worst performers, all reporting 24-hour losses above 10 percent (vs. USD), according to data from Coinmarketcap.

An effect of the plummet in cryptocurrency prices is a significant depreciation in the capitalization of the entire market. Just seven days ago, the market was valued at $182 billion, but that number has since fallen $54 billion, or 30 percent to where it now stands at $128 billion, its lowest value since September 2017. 

Disclosure: The author holds BTC, AST, REQ, OMG, FUEL, 1st and AMP at the time of writing.

Man hanging on edge of mountain image via Shutterstock;