Bitcoin and ether plummet 17% as broad sell-off batters crypto on the day El Salvador adopts bitcoin as legal tender

• Bitcoin and ether plummeted on Tuesday, the same day El Salvador adopted the crypto as legal tender.
• The popular cryptocurrency fell from a high of about $52,000 to a low of about $44,000.
• Bitcoin recovered some of its losses in afternoon trading and is now above its 50- and 200-day moving averages.
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The price of bitcoin and ether plunged on Tuesday, the same day El Salvador officially adopted the cryptocurrency as legal tender to help combat persistent hyper-inflation.

Bitcoin fell as much as 17%, while the sell-off spilled over to other cryptos including ether, which was down as much as 23% in Tuesday trades.

Bitcoin was trading near a key cluster of resistance levels around $52,000 before it plunged to a low of about $44,000. The cryptocurrency managed to find support at its rising 200-day moving average, and quickly bounced off of that level.

Ether fell from about $4,000 to as low as $3,200, both levels well above its 50-day and 200-day moving averages. The crypto pared its losses and was down about 12% at time of publication.

Bitcoin pared its mid-day losses to 11% at time of publication, with the cryptocurrency hovering just above its 50-day moving average of about $46,000. In the run-up to today's official adoption of bitcoin, El Salvador purchased 400 bitcoins, and indicated that it plans to purchase "a lot more." Those purchases were worth about $20 million.

To hasten the adoption of bitcoin as a means of legal tender, El Salvador will reportedly utilize crypto unicorn BitGo to code its official bitcoin wallet. But not everyone in El Salvador has been won over by the country's bitcoin plans, with polls suggesting 75% of Salvadorians have reservations about the plan.

Tuesday's sell-off in bitcoin and ether spilled over into other altcoins popular among crypto investors, with cardano, dogecoin, and litecoin all plunging more than 14%.