Once again, Bitcoin is experiencing a sharp decline during the past hours

Cryptocurrency bitcoin hovered around $49,000 Monday morning, down 1.5% on the day, international news agency Reuters said, as traders suffered losses after a grueling weekend as the price of the world's largest digital asset at one point lost more than a fifth of its value.

The agency noted this trajectory brought the price of bitcoin back and the amount invested in bitcoin futures back to where they were in early October, before the massive price spike that sent the token to an all-time high of $69,000 on November 10.

Crypto data platform Coinglass showed open interest - the total number of futures contracts held by market participants at the end of the trading day - on all exchanges most recently at $16.5 billion compared to $23.5 billion on Thursday, and as high as $27 billion on November 10.

As prices fell further, investors who had bought bitcoin on the sidelines saw exchanges close their positions, causing a series of sell-offs. A handful of retail-focused exchanges closed more than $2 billion in long bitcoin positions on Saturday, according to Coinglass.