The deteriorating macroeconomic climate and the collapse of industry giants such as FTX and Terra have affected the price of Bitcoin this year.
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The cryptocurrency market suffered heavy selling overnight Saturday amid an unprecedented Iranian drone and missile attack on Israel.
Bitcoin fell about 8% late Saturday evening, as US officials confirmed the attack had occurred. Cryptocurrencies were among the only risky assets to trade over the weekend, and the decline was seen as an initial reaction to escalating tensions in the Middle East.
Bitcoin was trading at around $70,000 on Saturday evening, but fell below $62,000, according to data from the Bitstamp exchange. By Sunday morning, the coin had rebounded to trade above $64,000. Other coins such as Ether also saw heavy selling, down as much as 10% in some cases.
The Bitcoin sell-off was the steepest in more than a year, according to Bloomberg, with the currency hitting new records recently amid inflows into U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs that continue to drive the cryptocurrency's price action.
In the Middle East, the overnight events marked the first direct attack on Israel from Iranian territory. Israel said it identified 300 “threats of various types” and eliminated “99%” of them heading to Israeli territory.
The flood of drones and missiles into Israel was reportedly in response to a suspected Israeli raid that led to the killing of senior Iranian officials in Syria.
The Iranian currency fell to a record high of 705,000 rials/dollar on the unofficial market around 10:30 a.m. local time on Sunday, according to data from foreign exchange monitoring website Bonbast.
The main index of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, TA-35, It was down 0.38% at 10:23 AM London time.
CNBC's Roksandra Iordas contributed to this article.
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