Bitcoin Mania Interrupted, for Now, After Outage Triggers Selloff
- Rise above $11,000 gives way to 20 percent drop in 90 minutes
- Massive spike in exchange traffic leads to some outages
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It takes a lot to startle fans of bitcoin, the digital gold of the moment. But Wednesday was, well, a lot -- a wild run of exuberant peaks and white-knuckled declines that left even diehards breathless.
The dizzying rally in bitcoin, a bull market with few precedents in investing history, was abruptly interrupted by a market outage in the U.S. that seemed to captivate Wall Street even more than the day’s selloff in high-flying technology stocks.