That the value of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can be very volatile is no secret. On January 8th, the whole market with Bitcoin at the head of the pack went into a freefall from which it has not yet recovered. Many factors were blamed at the time. It could actually be just one.

Neither the regulations initiated by different governments, nor the frivolous investment of all those who have jumped on Bitcoin's bandwagon in recent months. According to The Wall Street Journal, the culprit for the whole cryptocurrency market collapsing was one person: Brandon Chez.

Chez is the creator of coinmarketcap. com. In 2013, this 31-year-old developer created this page which tracks the changes in the values of different cryptocurrencies from his apartment in Queens. The page works by averaging the different currency exchange markets. When Bitcoin and the other currencies became popular in 2017, coinmarketcap. com became one of the most popular websites in the world and even beat rivals like CoinDesk, Coinbase or Blockchain. info. The revenue source of the site is Adwords advertising.

So far so normal. The problems began on January 7, when Chez made a significant change in his page that had important repercussions. The developer decided to remove the South Korean market from the algorithm that calculated Bitcoin's price. The reason for this decision is that the value of the currency in this market was ridiculously higher than the rest.

Chez didn't release the change. He simply applied it, devaluing Bitcoin's value all at once without any apparent reason. The response was almost immediate. Prices began to plummet and have not yet recovered. Coinmarketcap.com remains a very popular site and Chez has stayed out of the picture. The Wall Street Journal has tried to contact him to the point of showing up at his apartment, but he neither opens the door nor answers the calls.

It would be very optimistic to say that this incident will not happen again. Coinmarketcap.com or any other page can change an algorithm again and cause the coin to fire or drill back in. It is a problem that has no clear solution until tough regulation (which is already underway in many countries) comes. Until then, this is the price to be paid for investing in cryptocurrencies.