Bitcoin, the world's largest digital currency, fell as much as 14% to $51,541 on Sunday due to a power outage in China.
By mid trading Bitcoin lost 10% at $53,991, loosing $12,000 from Wednesday's level. Ether also dropped 10% to $2,101.
CoinMarketCap cited a blackout in China's Xinjiang region, which is said to operate a lot of bitcoin mining, caused the sell off.
"People may have sold digital currencies on news of the blackout in China rather than the impact it was already having on the network, revealing a fundamental weakness" Said Luke Sully, CEO of Ledgermatic digital asset treasury firm.
A hash rate is used to measure the processing capacity of the entire Bitcoin network, and determines the energy required by miners to produce new Bitcoins.
The decline in Bitcoin also comes after Turkey's central bank banned the use of cryptocurrencies in purchases on Friday.
Despite the sudden sell-off, Bitcoin is still up 89% so far in 2021, driven by its mainstream acceptance as an investment and means of payment.
At press time, BTC is trading at a price of $$56,971 with a market cap of $1.089 trillion.
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