This week as negative news piled up with little positive developments to mitigate the consequences, all major cryptocurrencies went falling down fiercely. The bears had an upper hand over the bulls as a few of regulatory currents were felt against cryptocurrencies and yes, a hack that began the week.
South Korean Bithumb, the sixth largest exchange in the world, got hacked and the dumping began in fear. Indian Zebpay announced that the banks are about to cut off from banking services with cryptocurrencies, and everyone started selling cryptos like crazy. Another reason behind the sharp negative reaction came from Ireland. where a Bitcoin broker Eircoin accused Banking and Payments Federation of Ireland of discriminating against the accounts of crypto-related companies. And in Switzerland, the Bank of International Settlements released a report that bitcoin would bring down the internet, which was followed by the Swiss National Bank saying that they are not considering an electronic version of the Swiss Franc. Also, Mt Gox the most notorious exchange to be hacked in bitcoin history is also back in the news. The week ended with the regulator in Japan, FSA directs six crypto exchanges in the market to improve their anti-money laundering measures.
Bitcoin (BTC)
Bitcoin the bellwether has seen a drop from this week highs of USD 6,822.50 that it hit June 19 to lows of USD 6,071.81 on June 23 overall recording a knockdown of close to 7.16%. This reduces Bitcoin’s market capitalisation to US$103.5 billion. The exchanges that were more active, in volumes, with BTC this week. The exchanges that were more active, in volumes, with BTC this week were Binance(5.19%), OKEx (4.44%) ad BitFinex (4.36%)
With all negatives, some voices still spoke positively about the bitcoin this week were Todd Gordon, founder of TradingAnalysis.com predicted Bitcoin (BTC) to drop to $4,000 prior to a rebound above $10,000 by 2019 on CNBC’s Stock Draft June 22. Brian Kelly of BKCM LLC remains bullish on Bitcoin despite the steady decline experienced in 2018 as he boldly declared that Bitcoin isn’t dead yet.
Ethereum (ETH)
Ethereum the second largest coin, has also not been spared by the fresh declines sweeping across the market. It has seen a drop from the weekly peak of USD 542.35 that it hit June 19 to valleys of USD 456.88 on June 22 with reported overall declines of 7.27 %. From peaks to lows the fall has been more that 15% leaving Ethereum with a market capitalisation of US$45.9 billion. The exchanges that were more active, in volumes, with ETH this week were Coinbene(17.77%), OKEx (5.06%) ad BitFinex (3.73%)
A big negative for the coin this week was that Tron recorded the exit from ERC 20 tokens to its own MainNet ditching the Ethereum blockchain.
On the positive side, Congressman Tom Emmer praised the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for clarifying that Ethereum’s native cryptocurrency, ether, is not a security. Microsoft announced upcoming plans to exploit Quorum, a private blockchain technology platform derived from Ethereum, to manage royalty payments in the future. Ethereum guru Vitalik Buterin discussed some possible upgrades to Ethereum involving Casper and sharding.
Ripple (XRP)
Ripple, the third largest kid, did also see a drop of 14.21% from the highs of USD 0.558059 to lowest point of 0.477286 during the week reporting a fall of close to 10% cutting market capitalisation to US$18.8 billion. The exchanges that were more active, in volumes, with XRP this week were Bitbank(19.39%), HitBTC(9.88%) and Binance (7.68%)
In news around Ripple, XRP seemed to be the solution for banks to get rid of remittance obstacles. CEO of Ripple, Mr Garlinghouse urged Coinbase to List Ripple. This week, Garlinghouse also defended XRP’s utility at CB Insights’ Future of Fintech conference
The other movers and shakers
This week IOTA, Dash and Neo reached critical support levels which if breaks could see sharp declines. And all eyes are set Litecoin (LTC) Derivatives launch by Crypto Facilities.
The Other coins that made to the top and bottom this week according to Coin Market Cap (accessed on June 24 at 10:49 pm IST) were
Movers
1World- Showing a rise of 145.90%
Dascoin- Showing a rise of 125.14%
Fantomcoin- Showing a rise of 104.49%
Shakers
MIRQ- Showing a drop of 83.77%
Super Bitcoin – Showing a drop of 69.69%
Morpheus Network- Showing a drop of 64.51%