Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency has suddenly dropped after a relatively positive start of 2019. Additionally, all the coins in the market plummeted within a matter of minutes. This includes a majority of the cryptocurrencies in the market, with some plunging by double digits.
Coins such as Bitcoin [BTC], Ethereum [ETH], Litecoin [LTC], and XRP also witnessed a massive drop in their price due to a bear’s attack. Additionally, Ethereum lost its second position to XRP, days after regaining it. At the time of press, Bitcoin was trading at $3684.69, with a market cap of $64.40 billion. The cryptocurrency has a trading volume of $6.33 billion and has plunged by over 5% in the past 24 hours.
However, as the value of the cryptocurrency has taken a sudden downward trend, the number of daily transactions of Bitcoin has taken an upward trend. On January 9, 2019, the cryptocurrency recorded its highest confirmed transactions since the past one-year. Here, confirmed transactions refers to the number of transactions that have been confirmed on the Bitcoin blockchain. It was not immediately clear what had sparked the sudden sell-off, though market analysts attribute these latest moves to a number of causes.
“A few drivers are rumored to be behind the crypto sell-off in the last 24 hours,” said David Thomas, co-founder of London-based cryptocurrency broker GlobalBlock. “Firstly, there was a 51% attack on Ethereum classic which resulted in the apparent double-spend of $1.1m of ETC.
Naturally, occurrences such as these can tend to cause some fear in the market surrounding overall security and confidence surrounding both cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology itself. However, many traders and investors are fretting over the possibility of bitcoin or another major token being hit by a similar attack, something that’s deemed highly unlikely by analysts.
The bitcoin price is now down almost 80% from the near $20,000 peak it hit in December 2017, though many of bitcoin’s biggest supporters continue to talk up the digital currency’s long-term prospects.
The dominant cryptocurrency showed virtually no signs of a major trend reversal throughout December and January, struggling to recover beyond the $4,000 region. As such. BTC is expected to remain volatile in the $3,000 to $4,000 range in the foreseeable future, as low market cap crypto assets struggle to deal with intensifying sell pressure.
