Flagship cryptocurrency bitcoin hit an eight-month low on Sunday, sinking below $6,000 to end a devastating week of negative news. The market is largely green today and bitcoin is trading well above $6200 up 3.5% from yesterday’s trading.
Ethereum Classic (ETC)is leading the surge with gains of 12% and EOS at 9.3%. Monero (XMR) is one of the best performing cryptocurrencies with gains of more than 10%. The privacy focussed coin is currently trading at $125 a unit on Bitfinex.
Cardano is up by about 7% after boosted by news of its listing on social trading platform eToro. Litecoin climbed 5% to trade at $81 a unit while ripple has jumped $4% to trade at $0.47.
Billions were wiped off the market last week after a string of negative news.
Japanese exchange bitFlyer, one of the largest in the world suspended new account registrations last week to bolster its internal systems.
The exchange was among a number of other exchanges issued with improvement orders by authorities last week. The regulator cited lack of adequate KYC and anti-money laundering controls as reason for the move.
Japan has been on the forefront calling for global efforts to regulate the cryptocurrency market. Some of the measures taken recently include a ban on anonymous cryptocurrencies such as Zcash, Dash and Monero.
Attacks on Exchanges
South Korean exchange Bithumb was also hit by hackers raising concerns about the security of tokens under the custody of exchanges. An estimated $30 million was reported to have been stolen although the exchange said it would refund its customers.
This came barely two weeks after another attack on Coinrail which similarly occasioned a drop in prices.
At the same time, another equally damaging report claiming bitcoin market prices may have been artificially inflated late 2017 served to further deepen the sell off.
But perhaps the most damaging news was the speech by an official of the Bank of International Settlements who called for some cryptocurrencies to be treated as securities.
Altcoins like ethereum and sunk even deeper during the rout losing as high as 20% of their value in the last one week.
Bitcoin is now valued at just a third of its value during its peak in mid December when it traded just a whisker away from $20,000.
Total cryptocurrency market capitalisation now stands at $257.7 billion down from $291 million on June 21. That is a loss of $34 billion in just four days. On the positive side, about $3 billion has been added in the last 6 hours.
At the same time, fiat withdrawals from cryptocurrency exchanges might no longer be possible in India come July as the deadline set by the central bank to stop such services elapses.