After a week of boring sideways trading, the cryptocurrency market has made its decision — solidifying that sellers are firmly in control. 

Sea of Red

The last 24 hours have been a bloodbath for cryptocurrencies across the board after a week of prolonged sideways trading kept sellers firmly in control.

The total cryptocurrency market capitalization has fallen from roughly $340 billion at 01:30 CET to nearly $320 billion at 10:00 CET — with the majority of said loss occurring in the span of fewer than 2 hours. At the time of this writing, it appears the sell-off has not finished.

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.

[06.10]
15:00 수사기관, 타거래소, 코인개발사의 협조로 펀디엑스, 엔퍼, 애스톤등 유출된 코인 총량의 2/3를 회수 또는 회수에 준하는 조치가 완료되었으며, 나머지 코인들에 대해서도 수사기관과 관련기관의 협조로 회수에 최선을 다하고 있습니다.

— coinrail (@Coinrail_Korea) June 10, 2018

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.

What do you think of today’s prices? Do you think news or manipulation is to blame for the flash crash? Let us know in the comments below! 

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, CoinMarketCap.com, Twitter/@Coinrail_Korea.