The Bitcoin price once again dipped below $8,000 on Tuesday, demonstrating an inability to break out of its prolonged slump. The wider markets failed to fare much better, placing the cryptocurrency market cap at risk of descending below the $300 billion mark
At present, the market has an aggregate value of $301.8 billion, down from $320.4 billion on Monday. This translates into a single-day index decline of six percent.
Bitcoin Price Enters Sub-$8,000 Territory
The Bitcoin price continued to trend down on Tuesday. The flagship cryptocurrency has spent the majority of the day hovering around the $8,000 mark, and while it has thus far resisted further downward pressure it is unclear whether this support level will hold. At the time of writing, the Bitcoin price was trading at $7,945 on Bitfinex, which translated into a $135.4 billion market cap.
Ethereum Price Continues to Struggle
The Ethereum price, on the other hand, lagged the index with a single-day decline of eight percent. At present, Ethereum is priced at $460 on Bitfinex, down from approximately $500 the previous day. Ethereum now has a $45.3 billion market cap.
The decline came despite a report that Coinbase is adding support for the ERC20 technical standard, which suggests that Ethereum-based tokens may get listed on the firm’s cryptocurrency exchange and brokerage platform in the future.
However, reports also emerged that cryptocurrency mining hardware manufacturer Bitmain has developed the first Ethereum ASIC miner, which could lead to some contentious debates about centralization if these miners are released before Ethereum makes its transition to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.
