The crypto market had a disappointing finish to the month and heavy declines are being seen across the board this morning.
This has led to the value of the entire market falling by 5% or almost US$15 billion to US$276.4 billion according to Coin Market Cap.
According to Forbes, there are a couple of reasons for the declines. One is that traders in South Korea have been hitting the sell button in response to news that the local authorities are considering passing a law that would end tax benefits for cryptocurrency exchanges.
In addition to this, there are reports that bank-owned currency trading utility CLS and enterprise software giant IBM are teaming up to trial the blockchain-based LedgerConnect.
This is an application that offers services from different vendors including international banking giants Barclays and Citigroup. Forbes explains that "LedgerConnect will allow financial institutions to access distributed ledger technology-based services in areas such as know-your-customer processes, sanctions screening, collateral management, derivatives post-trade processing and reconciliation and market data."
There may be concerns that this could allow banks to skip cryptocurrencies and use their own systems.
Here is the state of play on Wednesday morning:
The Bitcoin (BTC) price is down 5% over the last 24 hours to US$7,733.75 per coin, reducing its market capitalisation to US$132.9 billion.
The Ethereum (ETH) price has fallen 4.9% over the period to US$432.75, giving ETH a market capitalisation of US$43.7 billion.
The Ripple (XRP) price us down 2.7% since this time yesterday to 43.25 U.S. cents, leaving the alt coin with a market capitalisation of US$17 billion.
The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has dropped 5% over the last 24 hours to US$770.40 per token, giving the Bitcoin spin off a market capitalisation of US$13.3 billion.
The EOS (EOS) price has tumbled 6% since this time yesterday to US$7.27, reducing the market capitalisation of the alt coin to US$6.6 billion.
Outside the top five the declines were just as severe. Over the period the Stellar (XLM) price is down 7.4%, Litecoin (LTC) is off 4%, Cardano (ADA) has dropped 7.6%, IOTA (MIOTA) is down 4.4%, and Tether (USDT) is flat at 99.9 U.S. cents.
