Ether tumbles, bitcoin drops below US$6,000 as almost every cryptocurrency sinks
Worries that the Ethereum platform won’t be able to withstand enough transaction volumes to support applications for the mass-market have also weighed on the digital asset
Initial coin offerings (ICOs) using the ethereum blockchain are seen as one of the main catalysts for sending ether's price surging last year. Now these are being blamed for its decline.
Ether, the cryptocurrency of the distributed-ledger network, sank as much as 13 per cent, while all but three of the 100 biggest digital currencies tracked by Coinmarketcap.com recorded declines over the past 24 hours. The price slumped to as low as US$285, pushing it below US$300 for the first time since November. Ether is down about 60 per cent this year, compared with bitcoin’s 54 per cent slide.
Bitcoin, the largest digital currency, fell as much as 6.2 per cent to US$5,887 as of 3:07 pm in Hong Kong, the lowest level since June, according to Bloomberg composite pricing.
The total market capitalisation of virtual currencies dropped to US$192 billion from a peak of about US$835 billion in January, erasing much of the gains seen during the speculative mania at the end of 2017.
Ether skyrocketed over US$1,000 in February in part as startups built projects on top of the ethereum blockchain and sold digital tokens in exchange for ether in crowd sales known as ICOs. Investors who bought ether to participate in those ICOs drove up the price. Now, some of those projects are cashing out to cover expenses and on concern this year’s cryptocurrency bear market will drag out, according to Biswa Das, who runs cryptocurrency quantitative hedge fund BloomWater Capital.