Bitcoin, Ether, Dogecoin prices dive; check cryptocurrency rates now

Cryptocurrency rates had brought joy to investors recently, but now they are drawing tears as is clear from the fall in Bitcoin, Ether, Dogecoin prices.

Cryptocurrency rates have plunged in a major way with Bitcoin price down by over 4%, Ether down by 4.5% and Dogecoin price by over 4%. (REUTERS)

Bitcoin, Ether, Dogecoin prices took a deep plunge today. The value of one of the world's best-known cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, fell over 4%. Bitcoin price fell to $60,350 at its lowest for the day, taking losses from a record high of $69,000 struck on November 10 to more than 11%. On the other hand, Ether, which is the world's second-biggest and most popular cryptocurrency by market value was down 4.5% at $4,355.4.

Similarly, Dogecoin price fell over 4% to $0.25, while Shiba Inu's value plunged over 2% to $0.000051. Apart from Bitcoin, Ether, Shiba Inu and Dogecoin, other popular cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin, XRP, Uniswap, and Solana also witnessed a sharp decline in value over the last 24 hours.

Interestingly, this decline in the value of various cryptocurrencies is not driven by news or an announcement. "There is a lack of news and this is some pure selling of spot and some additions of short selling. Outside of this, there is no significant news," Matthew Dibb, chief operating officer at Singapore-based crypto asset manager Stack Funds told Reuters.

Separately, Bitcoin underwent a major upgrade earlier this week. The update is called Taproot and enables its blockchain -- the technology powering cryptocurrencies -- to execute more complex transactions, potentially widening the virtual currency's use cases and making it a little more competitive with Ethereum for processing smart contracts. Smart contracts are self-executing transactions whose results depend on pre-programmed inputs.

Notably, Taproot upgrade includes three separate upgrade proposals. But at its core, the upgrade introduces a new digital signature scheme called "Schnorr". This digital signature will make Bitcoin transactions more efficient and more private. It will enable Bitcoin users to execute more complex smart contracts. However, the biggest impact of the Taproot upgrade would be Bitcoin network's ability to process more smart contracts, which is similar to what Ethereum does. In addition to this, Bitcoin transactions will become more data-efficient, optimizing block capacity and leading to lower transaction fees.