Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news
- Introduction: Bitcoin plunged last night after Musk tweet…
- …then Musk: To clarify speculation, Tesla has not sold any Bitcoin
- Analysts: Bitcoin has lost upward momentum
- UK ‘faces labour shortage’ as Covid and Brexit fuel exodus of overseas workers
Ryanair has posted the biggest annual loss in the company’s 35-year history, after Covid travel restrictions and national lockdowns nearly wiped out traffic last year.
The airline swung to an €815m (£701m) loss in the 12 months to 31 March, compared with a €1bn profit a year earlier, after passenger numbers plunged 81% in what it said was its “most challenging” year to date.
Related: Ryanair reports record £701m loss as Covid forces it to slash flights
Although bitcoin has risen back to around $45,000 this morning, it’s still trading around its lowest levels since the end of February — and nearly a third off April’s record high.
Neil Wilson of Markets.com says this latest volatility shows that bitcoin is highly speculative, easy to manipulate….and a bubble:
Finally, I thought Donald Trump’s ban from Twitter would mean markets would suffer less ‘noise’. I was wrong. First meme stocks came along, now we have Elon Musk moving crypto prices with his missives. The latest in the drama saw Bitcoin jump about $2.5k this morning after Elon Musk denied Tesla had sold its Bitcoin holdings.
A nice pop, but this is small versus the Musk-induced selling that has been taking place lately. In addition to Tesla saying it would stop accepting Bitcoin as payment, Musk indicated in a reply to a tweet that the company was dumping or had already dumped all its Bitcoin. Prices fell sharply over the weekend and at $44k the crypto asset is still down by around a third from the all-time high near $66k set in April.
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