Bitcoin Hits Six-Week Low – Blood in the Streets For Other Cryptocurrency

Investing, News, Regulation | January 16, 2018 By:

A massive sell-off reminiscent of the pre-Christmas crash is underway this morning, as bitcoin and almost every other form of cryptocurrency is heading down. A board filled with red arrows saw legacy bitcoin at $11,400 per single coin this morning, down from just above $14,000 yesterday.

The grim news went across the board. Ethereum’s ETH was down 21 percent and is barely over the $1,000 mark; Ripple has dropped more than 30 percent to $1.25; Bitcoin Cash is down more than 23 percent to $1,400; and Litecoin is close to 20 percent down, sitting at $193.

Bad news from China, the ongoing crackdown in South Korea, the move to increasingly regulate digital currency by governments, and profit-taking may be the drivers of the sudden crash. Whatever is the motivation, it’s one of the biggest crashes of the last 12 months.

Bitcoin market highlights for the 24 hours ending January 16, 2018 at 1:00 pm U.S. Eastern Time

The highest price seen was $14,032.00 on the Kraken exchange at 1:24 pm yesterday. Kraken saw $75,805,900 of bitcoin change hands.

The lowest price seen was $11,139.50 on Binance’s exchange at 5:06 am today. Binance’s 24 hour volume was $468,643,000.

The average price on the surveyed exchanges, as weighed by volume, was $12,574.36.

Volatility was unusually high, with the BlockTribune Volatility Index coming in at 69.1. A higher number indicates greater price volatility with 50 describing an average day.

These statistics were consolidated from 11 different exchanges. It includes only BTC/USD trades and only on those exchanges that had at least 1% of the total volume of BTC/USD trades during the measurement period.