The cryptocurrency markets experienced a massive crash on Wednesday afternoon with the rout continuing well into the night and on Thursday morning. BTC plummeted by over 10% to the $5,700 level—a new low for 2018 as a huge selloff drove the largest currency by market cap into freefall.
Ethereum also experienced a similar savage drop, which was even more pronounced after the currency fell to below the $180 level on very high turnover. It eventually recovered slightly to the $183 level at press time on Thursday. Bitcoin BCH also dropped heavily by as much as 15% to settle at the $460 level pre-protocol upgrade, although there could be further instability in the run up to the much anticipated event. Ripple was also down heavily by as much as 10% to the $0.47 mark as the sell off affected practically all major currencies.
EOS and Stellar also saw considerable drops of 12 and 9% respectively, with the former’s price settling at around the $4.66 level, whilst the latter gave up all the gains of the past week to trade at the $0.24 mark. Litecoin slumped by as much as 13% to the $44 mark—a level not seen since it first started to rise over a year ago. NEO continued to crash and reached a yearly low of $13, which was almost 90% off its all time high of $190 reached in January.
Other currencies with smaller market caps also saw massive drops with Ethereum Classic falling a massive 17% to the $7.85 level, a price not seen for over two years. Cardano was also down by a similarly huge 15% to the $0.063 mark, whilst IOTA also lost heavily and was down by 16% to the $0.43 mark, also a record low this year. Currencies such as ICX, QTUM, VET and NULS lost similarly badly with drops ranging from 12 to 16%, whilst BNB suffered a less drastic 10% drop to the $8.42 level.
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