It seems that the long-anticipated cryptocurrency correction has finally materialized as over $200 billion vanished from the market cap. Bitcoin plummeted to below $33,000, while most alternative coins have it even worse with massive double-digit price drops.
After a highly volatile and positive first ten days of the new year, in which BTC broke above $40,000 for the first time and charted an all-time high of $42,000, the cryptocurrency headed south.
During the weekend, BTC was hovering above $40,000 again and even hinting at a new breakout. However, the situation quickly changed in the past 24 hours as the bears took charge.
Bitcoin firstly dropped to about $35,000 (on Bitstamp) before it bounced off to north of $39,000 hours later. However, the price declines weren’t over – this time, BTC lost even more value.
Bitcoin’s intraday low came at $32,400, making it a 24-hour price drop of about $9,000 from yesterday’s high. Nevertheless, the asset has recovered some of the losses and currently trades at $35,500.
One possible reason behind these developments could be that the giant banking institution HSBC had reportedly blocked transactions from crypto exchanges for UK investors.
As it typically happens during a massive correction, the altcoins have it just as bad if not worse than BTC. After yesterday’s significant gains, most alternative coins have dumped by double-digits today.
Ethereum was just inches away from painting a new all-time high yesterday, but it has dropped by 17% to $1,100 today. Ripple was on its way to recover some of the substantial losses following the SEC charges, but another 20% decline has taken XRP to $0.28.
Bitcoin Cash (-20%), Binance Coin (-10%), Chainlink (-17%), Polkadot (-17%), Cardano (-17%), Litecoin (-21%), and Stellar (-20%) are also deep in the red.
EOS is down by more than 30% after Dan Larimer resigned as CTO from the company behind the blockchain project – Block.one.
Further declines are evident from Maker (-35%), Bitcoin SV (-33%), Nano (-30%), Status (-28%), Verge (-27%), NXM (-27%), Loopring (-25%), Band Protocol (-25%), Crypto.com Coin (-25%), and more.
Ultimately, the cumulative market capitalization of all cryptocurrency assets has plummeted by more than $200 billion to below $900 billion.
