Ether, the digital token of Ethereum, a cryptocurrency that is up over 3500% in 2017, plummeted to a low of $13 on Wednesday evening on GDAX, losing some 25x in value before making up those losses
According to data from cryptocurrency exchange GDAX, ether prices sunk to a low of $13 today at approximately 20:30 UTC. In the minutes leading up to the fall, ether was trading at $317.
The impact of the crash saw GAX operator Coinbase disable margin trading on the ETH-USD order book before completely disabling Ethereum trading.
Updates on GDAX’s status page read:
Investigating – We’re currently investigating sign in issues on GDAX.com, as well as the cause of rapid price movement on the ETH-USD order book. We have disabled further margin funding for the time being.
Jun 21, 12:53 PDT
Update – Trading is disabled for ETH-USD while we investigate this issue. We are also investigating reports of sign in issues on GDAX.com.
The fall comes at a time when the Ethereum network – the world’s second largest public blockchain after bitcoin – is seeing an unprecedented rise in activity. On June 20, the network reached 300,000 transactions, according to data from Etherscan.
Some Ethereum adopters have pointed the finger squarely at ICO token sales, a radical new crowdfunding model powered by cryptocurrencies that have proven to be enormously successful in recent months.