Bitcoin reeling amid renewed cryptocurrency crackdown

But the digital currency remains more than 1,100 percent higher over the last 12 months, according to Coinbase.

Nearly everything “looks” cheap right now, but you might also want to compare the Dollars price of a token with its BTC price to get an accurate picture. Data from CoinMarketCap shows that numerous top cryptocurrencies remain in the red for the past 24 hours, including ether, which has fallen below $900. Even Ethereum, which seemed bulletproof with a long run upward, has dropped back to just over $1000, a low for it not seen since January 5.

As Upbit released information about its daily transactions to CoinMarketCap, it has become No.1 firm in terms of global cryptocurrency transactions in a drive. Litecoin fell to under $200 for the first time all year, Ripple is dropping like a stone down to $1.30 from a high of $3.84 this year.

China is stepping up crackdown on cryptocurrency exchanges.

Mati Greenspan, senior market analyst for eToro, said low trading in Korea and Japan may have contributed to the price movement. Earlier this month, ripple prices appeared to plunge in United States dollar terms after CoinMarketCap said it was excluding price information from some Korean exchanges due to “extreme divergences in price from the rest of the world”.

“The premiums that were being paid by Japanese and South Korean crypto traders is also coming down, so that’s a good sign as well”, he said. A Bloomberg report quotes unnamed sources as saying “the government plans to block domestic access to homegrown and offshore platforms that enable centralized trading”.

Another reason may be the fact that China, while it banned cryptocurrency trading within the country, the government is now trying to ban mining.

The Ripple price (XRP/USD) has seen significant losses in today’s trading, as increased regulatory pressure from South Korea and China has caused a lot of uncertainty in the cryptocurrency market.

Bitcoin’s market value has dropped to about US$170 billion from a peak north of US$310 billion. He points out that the huge number of investors now long of this market may very well be a strong contrarian indicator and warning of further declines.

This explains the Chinese government’s motives behind the use of bitcoin and altcoins is a means of handling the larger issue of illegal activities such as money laundering and fraud.

Hayter said that panic was “lead the herd to sell with no other justification than fear”, but added that it was “difficult to say” where the market would be headed next. Because CME and CBOE Bitcoin futures first expire tomorrow, institutions who have shorted Bitcoin are pushing the market down to take maximum profits from the impending closures, in which “losing” long positions will be forced to liquidate and reward their winning counterparts.