The cryptocurrency market has stopped the rot on Tuesday morning and at the time of writing the value of the entire market is mostly flat compared with 24 hours ago.
This leaves the crypto market with a value of US$295.5 billion according to Coin Market Cap, down a remarkable 14% since Friday morning.
What happened?
Over the weekend the market was heavily sold off after one of South Korea's smaller crypto exchanges announced on Twitter that it had been hacked.
In addition to this, reports by CNBC that U.S. regulators are investigating potential price manipulation at four major cryptocurrency exchanges also weighed heavily on trader sentiment. The impacted exchanges are believed to be Bitstamp, Coinbase, itBit and Kraken.
Considering sentiment in the crypto market was already very weak, this selloff comes as no surprise.
Here is the state of play on Tuesday morning:
The Bitcoin (BTC) price is mostly flat at US$6,795.75 per coin, keeping the world's largest cryptocurrency's market capitalisation steady at US$116.1 billion.
The Ethereum (ETH) price has fallen 0.5% over the last 24 hours to US$520.72 per token. This reduces Ethereum's market capitalisation to US$52 billion.
The Ripple (XRP) price has pushed 1.7% higher during the period to 58.5 U.S. cents, increasing the popular alt coin's market capitalisation to US$23 billion.
The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) price has edged 0.1% higher since this time yesterday to US$935.68 per token, lifting its market capitalisation to just over US$16 billion.
The EOS (EOS) price has fallen 0.7% over the last 24 hours to US$11.22 per token, leaving EOS with a market capitalisation of US$10 billion.
Outside the top five it has been a similar story during the period. The Litecoin (LTC) price is down 0.2%, the Stellar (XLM) price is 0.8% lower, the Cardano (ADA) price has fallen 2.4%, the IOTA (MIOTA) price is down 0.6%, and the TRON (TRX) price is off 0.7%.
What now?
Things don't look good for cryptocurrencies in my opinion. I can't help but feel that the combination of falling prices, hacks, and price manipulation allegations is likely to put off would-be traders from entering the market. Without new money being piled into the market, the prices of many of these cryptocurrencies may struggle to recover their declines. Unless of course there is a major positive catalyst.
