Bitcoin remained near $3,400 as the 2018 selloff widened

A market still pinned near its lows

Bitcoin remained near $3,400 on December 8, 2018, while ether stayed below $100 and the broader digital-asset selloff continued to dominate the market record. Kraken’s daily report displayed bitcoin at $3,331, down 1.36%, and ether at $85.60, down 6.76%. The exchange reported $107 million traded across all of its crypto and fiat markets, including $49.5 million attributed to bitcoin and $32.1 million to ether.

A separate CoinMarketCap historical snapshot showed bitcoin at $3,476.11, up 1.16% over its trailing 24-hour window but down 17.86% over seven days. It placed ether at $92.16, down 2.37% over 24 hours and 22.47% over seven days. The direction of the one-day bitcoin change therefore depended on the dataset and observation window, but both records put the largest cryptoasset in the mid-$3,000s after a severe weekly decline.

Those figures are not interchangeable closing prices. Cryptocurrency traded continuously, Kraken represented one venue with its own pairs and reporting convention, and CoinMarketCap aggregated data across venues into a dated snapshot. The defensible conclusion is a range and a trend: on December 8, bitcoin was roughly $3,300 to $3,500 in the cited records, while the seven-day aggregate measure remained sharply negative.

Why December 8 mattered

The session followed a fresh break in the 2018 bear market. CoinDesk reported that bitcoin reached $3,306 at about 01:00 UTC on December 7, a new low for 2018 in its dataset. By December 8, the market had not staged a convincing reversal. CoinMarketCap’s snapshot valued bitcoin’s circulating supply at $60.53 billion and ether’s at $9.56 billion, illustrating how far the market’s institutional and retail expectations had compressed from the prior cycle’s peak.

The breadth mattered as much as bitcoin’s level. CoinMarketCap showed XRP at $0.3073 with a 17.75% seven-day decline, bitcoin cash at $104.05 with a 40.29% seven-day decline, and EOS at $1.8436 with a 38.12% seven-day decline. These are provider-calculated snapshots, not audited valuations. Market capitalization was calculated from quoted price and estimated circulating supply, and reported volume could include venues with different surveillance and quality controls.

Kraken’s venue data reinforced that the weakness was not confined to a single aggregate. Its December 8 table had ether, bitcoin cash and litecoin down 6.76%, 5.06% and 4.35%, respectively, under Kraken’s reporting method. Tezos, by contrast, was shown up 11.4% on only $369,392 of reported volume, a reminder that percentage moves in smaller markets could sit on much thinner activity.

The regulatory backdrop, without a causal claim

The market was also digesting a December 6 Securities and Exchange Commission notice extending proceedings on Cboe BZX’s proposal to list shares of the VanEck SolidX Bitcoin Trust. The SEC designated February 27, 2019, as the date by which it would approve or disapprove the proposed rule change. That notice was a delay, not a rejection and not an approval.

It would overstate the evidence to assign the December 8 prices to that notice alone. The contemporaneous record establishes proximity, not causation. The selloff had already been developing across multiple assets, and continuous markets do not provide a controlled way to isolate one headline from liquidity, positioning, miner economics, fund redemptions or broader sentiment.

What the dated record supports

The strongest conclusion available for December 8, 2018, is narrower than a market-bottom narrative. Bitcoin remained close to the new 2018 low recorded one day earlier; ether and several other large assets were still posting substantial weekly losses; and venue-specific prices and percentage changes differed enough to require explicit sourcing.

Nothing in the December 8 evidence established that the decline had ended, that an exchange-traded bitcoin product would be approved, or that the quoted market capitalizations represented cash that could be realized. The record supports a stressed, fragmented market snapshot—not a forecast.