Bitcoin has once again fallen below the $9,000 mark as a bad 24 hours of news sent speculative investors scurrying back to their fiat currencies. Bitcoin itself is down 5.45 percent over the last day, according to CoinMarketCap, but that number is positively rosy compared to what the rest of the crypto-currencies are doing.
Ethereum is down 7 percent, while Ripple ,the third-largest currency, is down over 10 percent (and facing a serious lawsuit!), while smaller coins like EOS and IOTA are down nearly 15 percent.
A mixture of bad crypto news is likely to blame for the slide. Prosecutors in South Korea raided Upbit, the country’s largest crypto exchange, on Thursday amid allegations of fraud, which is why EOS is down so much. Upbit is the largest global market for EOS, which explains why that currency has been particularly hard hit.
Bitcoin prices were also hit by rumors that the trustee of Mt Gox, an infamous early crypto exchange that went down in flames, is preparing a massive selloff of Bitcoin from the exchange’s reserves. A website tracking the Mt Gox wallet showed that thousands of coins were moved to cold storage, which is often a sign that a transaction could be about to happen. A significant sell-off could have major short-term impacts on the price of Bitcoin, which has investors spooked.
