Cryptocurrency Markets Bleeding Deep Red, Almost Every Major Cryptocurrency Corrects Significantly
A huge correction has swept the cryptocurrency market in the past 24-hours with over $100 billion wiped out from the market. At the press time, the overall cryptocurrency market valuations have slipped down below $400 billion and currently at $382 billion. This is a huge decline of over 50% in a months’ time where the cryptocurrency market valuations were seen trading above $800 billion in the beginning of 2018.
Bitcoin, and almost every other altcoin, is bleeding deep red by correcting over 10-20%. Bitcoin has corrected by over 10% and way below $9,000 mark. At the press time, Bitcoin is currently trading at $8,245.13 with a reduced market cap of just $137 billion.
However, in addition to Bitcoin, many other cryptocurrencies have been dragged down considerably. Ethereum which showed a fantastic run in the past one month has corrected by 16% and slipped below $900. It is currently trading at $856 with a market cap of $84 billion.
Ripple’s XRP tokens had been on a steep rise since the mid of December as many banks announced testing the blockchain-based money transfer using Ripple’s XRP tokens. In the last 24-hours Ripple has corrected by more than 20% and it is currently trading at just $0.75. Over $12 billion have been eroded from Ripple’s market in the past 24 hours and it is currently at just over $28 billion.
A lot many factors have contributed sequentially over the past one month for the sideways movement of the crypto market. It all started with the South Korean government and officials cracking down on the crypto-trading activities owing to increased concerns money laundering and tax evasion. The Korean government is creating a regulatory framework to control the huge craze in cryptocurrency trading seen among its investors.
Earlier, there were also reports about South Korea planning to introduce a ban on trading activities. But after a huge uproar coming from the investor community, the Korean government has to reconsider its decision.
Yesterday, Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley while delivering his budget speech for 2018 said that the government will eliminate all crypto trading activities being done for “illegitimate” purposes like money laundering and tax evasion. The government has previously made it clear that it doesn’t consider cryptos to be a legal tender and asked investors to stay away from investing in this market.
Moreover, since the past week, there have been many reports of popular cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex embroiled and involved in false issuance of Tether tokens (USDT) and thus controlling and manipulating the price of Bitcoin for a long time. Neither the exchange nor the startup Tether has given any explanation on the alleged charges put on them and this has left many worried.
While all this was not enough, one of the Japan’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange reportedly lost a whopping $500 million in token lost which is termed as one of the biggest hacks in the crypto markets till date. Investigation reports revealed that this happened due to sloppy security management by the exchange. Although the exchange has promised to repay its investors back, but such a new coming from the most crypto-friendly nation casts a huge shadow on the crypto markets.