Bitcoin and cryptocurrency prices have fallen sharply over the last few days, with around $50 billion wiped from crypto markets.

[Updated: 07:32am EST 03/12/2020] The bitcoin price, which had been trading around $10,000 per bitcoin just last week, is now down almost 30% over the last seven days after suddenly plummeting this morning and wiping out all its 2020 gains. Bitcoin earlier collapsed to under $6,000 per bitcoin, sending many other major cryptocurrencies, including ethereum, Ripple’s XRP, bitcoin cash, and litecoin, even lower. Read the full story here.

Bitcoin's sudden sell-off was put down to global market turmoil sparked by oil cartel Opec's failure to agree to a supply cut, sending the oil price to historic lows, but some think bitcoin's move lower could have its origins elsewhere.

The bitcoin price had climbed through the first few months of 2020 but the recent falls erased ... [+]

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"The sudden drop in prices seems to arise out of the selling of [bitcoin] by PlusToken," the chief executive of India-based cryptocurrency exchange CoinSwitch.co, Ashish Singhal, told bitcoin and crypto industry news site CoinDesk.

PlusToken, a Ponzi scheme that swept China and Korea over the last few years, saw around $2 billion worth of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies stolen from investors.

Last Saturday, ahead of the traditional market rout caused by Opec, PlusToken scammers moved a little over $100 million worth of bitcoin to so-called mixers, designed to disguise the origin and destination of the coins.