Over the past week, thanks to the back-to-back government crackdowns in South Korea and China, it has been a sea of red in the world of digital currencies. However, instead of subsiding, as what it normally does after a market correction, the red tide seems to be more ruthless and unyielding as the days go by.
According to CoinMarketCap, the top 10 cryptocurrencies have all recorded double-digit losses, with NEM taking the brunt of the impact at a ghastly 42.2% price reduction.
Source: CoinMarketCap
In fact, among the top 100 coins on CoinMarketCap’s list, not a single coin has increased in value in the last 24 hours. The coin that suffered the least amount of losses – ignoring Tether – is Neblio, at -15.1%.
Source: CoinMarketCap
This is perhaps one of the biggest “crashes” in cryptocurrency history. The total market capitalization for all digital currencies hit a low $478 billion, shedding $225 billion in just 24 hours.
Source: CoinMarketCap
This massive plunge illustrates the insane volatility of the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, saw its market cap go below $200 billion for the first time since December 5 of last year. At the time of writing, a single Bitcoin is valued at $10,542, breaking past its 100-day moving average of $10,700 an entire month earlier than when pundits predicted it would.
Ethereum, which had an impressive rally at the beginning of 2018, went from $1,327 to sub-$900 – a 34% loss in 24 hours. The price of Ethereum stands at a low of $868 at press time, but the decline shows no signs of stopping just yet. Ripple suffered an even heavier blow, dipping over 50% in value over the last day.
Regardless of today’s slump, the whole cryptocurrency market is still up by 2800% on a one-year basis. Exactly one year ago, the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies stood at $17 billion, which shows how much the market has grown over the course of a year.
Nevertheless, there has been a lot of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) in the cryptocurrency space. One Twitter user urged investors to “get out while you can”:
Get out while you can. All 2017 gains will be erased just this week #bitcoincrash #xrp #ethereum #cryptocrash #CryptoNews https://t.co/bxKB5lSEuq
— BazaarPrime (@adigal_bose) January 16, 2018
In fact, the situation got so worse that there has been some cryptocurrency sub-reddits with suicide hotlines to prevent people from taking their own lives because of the losses they made in their investments.
On the other hand, some speculators recognized that this is not the first time that the crypto market has “crashed”.
This ain't our first #crypto crash rodeo, kids. #btc #bitcoin #cryptocurrency #cryptocrash #altcoins #altcoin #ethereum #ETC #LTC #XRP #TRX #Litecoin https://t.co/EcUpmUaupa
— CryptoTim (@CryptoShirtsEtc) January 16, 2018
