Cryptocurrency market suddenly drops by $20bn

The past 24 hours have been a bloodbath for crypto-currencies across the board after a week of prolonged lateral trading kept the sellers firmly in control.

The total market capitalization of cryptocurrency fell from about $340 billion at 1:30 am CET to nearly $320 billion at 10:00 am CET – most of this loss occurring in less than 2 hours. At the time of writing, it appears that the sale has not been completed.

Bitcoin has unsurprisingly fallen the least out of the major market players. The first and foremost cryptocurrency is trading at $7,230.36 USD and is down 5.55 percent, at the time of this writing.

Following suit, Ethereum is down 6.72 percent.

Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, and EOS have been hit even harder. The third, fourth, and fifth largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization are trading at prices down 8.46 percent, 9.53 percent, and 10.84 percent, respectively.

Cardano and IOTA have also been hit hard. The former is down 10.08 percent while the latter is down 13.39 percent.

All things considered, eager buyers might find today to be a good time to go shopping — potentially sparking the momentum needed to set off another bull run. However, the cryptocurrency market is unpredictable, and those waiting it out might not be interested in trying to catch a falling knife.

WHAT HAPPENED?

While it’s possible that the relative stagnation present in the cryptocurrency market this past week caused prices to simply tip over, it’s more than likely that sellers have taken the opportunity to drive prices to even lower levels — potentially inviting more institutional and big-money investment in the coming days.

Meanwhile, reports have emerged that South Korean cryptocurrency exchange CoinRail has been hacked. However, this news shouldn’t have had too much of an influence on the market, given that CoinRail is not a major exchange — being ranked 90th with a mere $2.6 million in daily trade volume. Still, the cryptocurrency market is notoriously fickle.

Perhaps more impactful is the news that US government investigators have ordered four major cryptocurrency exchanges — including Coinbase and Kraken — to hand over comprehensive information regarding trading in order to aid in its investigation over potential price manipulation.

Of course, not everyone believes the cryptocurrency market is manipulated. To those individuals, one might say suggest simply taking a look at the chart.