As many readers will no doubt be aware, the bitcoin (BTC) price and the Ripple (XRP) price have come crashing down to Earth with a bang on Friday.
At the time of writing the BTC price is down 14% over the last 24 hours to US$8,700 per coin according to Coin Market Cap. The XRP price is faring even worse and has lost 25% of its value and is down to 85 U.S. cents.
But the worst performer amongst the world's largest 20 cryptocurrencies is the Cardano (ADA) price.
At present Cardano is fetching just 35.6 U.S. cents, down over 31% since this time yesterday. This has reduced its market capitalisation to US$9.2 billion.
It also means that the price of ADA has fallen an incredible 72% since peaking at US$1.27 just under a month ago. In the process it has wiped off US$23.8 billion from its market capitalisation.
To put that into perspective, the combined value of Qantas Airways Limited (ASX: QAN), Crown Resorts Ltd (ASX: CWN), and REA Group Limited (ASX: REA) has been lost in just a matter of weeks.
But that is just from Cardano, of course. At its peak bitcoin had a market capitalisation of over US$335 billion, whereas now it has dwindled to just US$147 billion.
What next?
Considering the sizeable wealth that has been lost over the last few weeks, I would be very surprised if cryptocurrencies were able to climb back to their previous highs.
While I am happy to be proven wrong, I suspect that traders and speculators have been burnt one too many times now and are unlikely to come back and support a move higher.
For this reason, I think that the prudent thing to do is to watch on from the safety of the sidelines to see how things unfold.