By
Chimamanda U. Martha
April 24th, 2024
The cryptocurrency market attain a nine-month low since November 2017, as a huge sell-off is triggered in Bitcoin and other altcoins.
The Digital Currency market has made a new low for 2018 today as the overall market valuations have dropped below $200 billion. The market is reeling under a heavy selling pressure as over $25 billion have been wiped off the market in the last 24-hours. Bitcoin has lost nearly 7% in the last 24-hours as the world’s largest digital currency dipped below $6000 mark, momentarily, before finally recovering back.
As per the global charts on CoinMarketCap, the cryptocurrency market has dipped to a low of $189 billion which is the lowest in the last nine months since November 2017. However, today’s price fall in Bitcoin is relatively low in comparison to other altcoins which have been the major reason for the huge slump in the market valuations.
Data on the CoinMarketCap shows that except the Bitcoin, almost all the other top-twenty cryptocurrencies have lost between 10-20%. Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ripple and EOS have lost nearly 15% in the last 24-hours. Ethereum has been the major loser as the cryptocurrency has lost over $60, nearly 20%, with its market cap standing at just $26 billion.
Statistics show that in the last one week, the overall cryptocurrency market cap has dropped by 25% while Bitcoin has lost nearly 16% during the same period. The worst hit has been Ethereum which has lost nearly 40% in the last one week from a high of $410 to making a low of $256 today.
As the market and other altcoins are making a new low, Bitcoin dominance in the cryptocurrency market has spiked up as it alone accounts for 54% of the overall market cap.
The sell-off in the Bitcoin has been attributed to the delays in the decisions made by the SEC for the approval of the Bitcoin ETF products. The Bitcoin community has been eagerly waiting for some positive outcome from the SEC since long as it would mean the entry of institutional investors into the crypto market.
As far as Ethereum is concerned, the price drop in the Ether tokens is because of another reason. Santiment, a market research company which tracks how ICOs handle their Ether tokens, has released an interesting report giving some reason for the overall market drop.
Last year, a lot of ICOs hosted their projects on the Ethereum platform while raising money in Ether. The report from Santiment shows that a large number of startups on the Ethereum platform have been selling their tokens in dollar and euros. This has been driving down the price of Ether tokens.
Moreover, since the ICOs had their tokens on the Ethereum platform which is driven by the price of Ether, a spiral effect of sell-off is thus created wherein the market cap of those projects are all going down at a higher speed creating an overall negative sentiment.
The recent sell-off is so heavy and huge that many of the ICO-funded startups are having their current valuations to be much lower in comparison to what they had actually raised.