Much to the dismay of traders, it has been a terrible 24 hours of trade for the cryptocurrency market with heavy declines being seen across the board.
This has led to the entire value of the crypto market falling a massive 11.5% since this time yesterday to US$252.3 billion according to Coin Market Cap.
What happened?
The market tumbled after it emerged that Japan's financial regulator had ordered several cryptocurrency exchanges to do more to prevent money laundering.
According to CNBC, Japan's leading crypto exchange, bitFlyer, has been forced to suspend new sign ups until it has made appropriate improvements to its practices to stop money laundering and terrorist financing.
In addition to bitFlyer, five other crypto exchanges were hit with the same measures after regulators found weaknesses in their money laundering controls.
While this ought to be a positive for the industry, the decline would suggest that some nefarious traders have been rushing to sell before it is too late for them to do so.
And with 60% of crypto trading volumes coming from Japan on a typical day at present, it comes as no surprise that this news has been a market mover. Whether it can bounce back from here, time will tell.
Here is the state of play on Saturday morning:
The Bitcoin (BTC) price has fallen over 10% over the last 24 hours to a four-month low of US$6,052.61 per coin. This reduces Bitcoin's market capitalisation to US$103.5 billion.
The Ethereum (ETH) price has dropped 13% since this time yesterday to US$458.30 per token, leaving Ethereum with a market capitalisation of US$45.9 billion.
The Ripple (XRP) price has fallen 10.1% during the period to 49.9 U.S. cents, cutting the alt coin's market capitalisation to US$18.8 billion.
The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) price has plunged 15.1% over the last 24 hours to US$740.97 per token. This reduces the Bitcoin offshoot's market capitalisation to US$12.7 billion
The EOS (EOS) price has been the worst performer in the top five over the period with a massive 17.6% decline to US$8.56. This reduces the EOS market capitalisation to US$7.7 billion.
Outside the top five the declines were just as severe during the last 24 hours. Litecoin (LTC) is down 15.2% to US$81.94, Stellar (XLM) has fallen 12.6% to 19.9 U.S. cents, Cardano (ADA) has dropped 12.6% to 13.8 U.S. cents, TRON (TRX) is off 12.3% to 4.3 U.S. cents, and IOTA (MIOTA) has plunged 17% to 95.6 U.S. cents.
