The last 24 hours have been the worst the cryptocurrency markets have seen since the 24 hours prior. Things have been looking grim for weeks in fact, but on Nov. 19 the situation went from bad to critical as BTC fell below $4,500, dragging the rest of the market down with it. While some investors used this latest blow to bow out, others have used it as an opportunity to re-up on cheap coins.

Mind the Drop

There's rarely a dull day in cryptocurrency, but Nov. 19 will go down as a particularly memorable one, albeit for all the wrong reasons. Plummeting crypto prices, on top of a week of plummeting crypto prices, have left many traders in despair and others vowing to rage quit. So somber is the mood that the normally morbid humor that accompanies a price drop has been largely absent from crypto Twitter.

"Now is the time for compassion, patience, respect," tweeted Andreas Antonopoulos. "Lots of people have lost lots of money recently and it is not helpful to make empty promises, share shitty memes, or criticize others' choices."

On 4chan's /biz/ messageboard, the atmosphere was equally downbeat. "That's it, I sold," conceded one poster, accompanied by an image of weed-smoking Elon Musk photoshopped to resemble Brendan Fraser being justed. "I'm free. I'm finally free from this fucking hell of scammers … It was fun and games for a while, but now it's just a cruel sick joke. I bought [BTC] at 15K. No human can look at their money disappear before their very eyes and not be bothered. You know we're going to 3K, right?… Let's all stop pretending that this is gonna be anything but a bear market until 2020."