Innocent BenjaminA few weeks after having been around USD 65,000 per unit, the world’s most famous cryptocurrency reached USD 30,201.96 today. For specialists, these are movements characteristic of new assets that still do not enjoy the confidence of investors.
A cryptocurrency selloff that began last week when Elon Musk turned against Bitcoin continued on Wednesday, with the world’s largest crypto asset falling below $31,000 per unit for a few minutes. The drop of more than 44% in seven days dragged with it practically all the other most traded cryptocurrencies, such as Ether, Cardano, Binance Coin, Dogecoin and others, which show double-digit cuts so far today.
The latest price drop coincided with a renewed crackdown on cryptocurrencies by the People’s Bank of China. The central bank issued a statement on its WeChat account reiterating that financial institutions should not accept or trade cryptocurrencies, international media reported .
Bitcoin’s crash affected sentiments in the broader market as Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, was down 21.77% to $2,739. Dogecoin, one of Musk’s favorites, was down 22.85% at $0.38.
On aggregate, the value of the entire cryptocurrency market has fallen 13% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.com.
Wednesday’s crash amplified a slide that began last week after Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk announced that his company would no longer undertake initial plans to accept Bitcoin as a form of payment. Musk – a longtime cryptocurrency advocate – cited environmental concerns. Since then, Bitcoin has fallen more than 30% and is more than 40% down from its all-time high of about $ 65,000 per unit.
For specialists, the movement is typical of a market still in its infancy and that was affected by the overheating of financial assets at a global level due to the enormous injection of liquidity made by the main central banks of the world as an attempt to alleviate the associated crisis to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.
Although with less volatility, the main Wall Street indices also hit record highs in recent months, commodity markets are approaching nominal ceilings and the financial market in general took a “bubble” tone, according to some views.
Coinbase, Binance and Kraken Down
Numerous users are reporting problems accessing the services of crypto exchange, Coinbase, as we can be seen on pages like Downdetector, and Coinbase’s own status website notes that they are experiencing “intermittent downtime” and “delays in withdrawing ETH and ERC. -twenty”.
This situation occurs on a certainly black day for the world of cryptocurrencies with widespread falls after the ban on payments with bitcoins in China . The decision of the Asian giant has hit like a knockout blow and has come at a not especially good time for Bitcoin, which fell days ago and plummeted after certain comments from Elon Musk.
It is worryingly not just Coinbase.
Users are also experiencing problems with other services like Coindesk, Gemini, Binance and Kraken.
The coincidence of both happenings could not be accidental, although Mitrobe points this possibility with due precautions, given that the price of a good number of cryptocurrencies are falling sharply at the time of writing this piece and these bearish episodes usually push the sale.
In the last 24 hours, for example, bitcoin has fallen more than 21%, Ethereum 31%, Dogecoin 42% and Shiba 48%.
In fact, beyond the service interruptions that Coinbase is experiencing, as we said, it is also experiencing delays in withdrawals of Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens and points to “network congestion”. According to their website, it is the only cryptocurrency with whichn they are having problems.
However, Coinbase is not alone. Other services such as Coindesk, Gemini, Binance or Kraken are also down or having difficulties functioning properly.
Gemini and Binance too. And the phone app crypto dot com.
— (((Frances ‘Cassandra’ Coppola))) ??? (@Frances_Coppola) May 19, 2021
The Twitter handle however bullishly expressed that the major exchanges are shutting their servers to halt the “rotten run”.
Folks, the big crypto exchanges are currently demonstrating how to stop a run. They have closed their doors.
— (((Frances 'Cassandra' Coppola))) ??? (@Frances_Coppola) May 19, 2021
James steller
