Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency owners spent 2018 waiting for their investments to reach again the sky-high values of the end of 2017 but, unfortunately, they seem to have waited in vain. Across the board, the cryptocurrency market just plummeted $13 billion in a few hours on Wednesday. The three main stars, Bitcoin, Ethereum and XRP all posted the biggest losses on CoinMarketCap, a cryptocurrency-tracking site, but most other coins depreciated in value as well.
Late Wednesday, Bitcoin Cash went down 10.54 in value, followed by XRP (Ripple) down 9.95 percent, Ethereum with 9 percent and Bitcoin, the most famous of all, down 4.26 percent. Just looking at the charts, you can see most of them going into a nose-dive.
Translating those percentages into actual dollars shows that cryptocurrency owners lost $13 billion in just a few hours. This, of course, is not unexpected. Beyond the fears of a crypto-bubble, especially after Bitcoin almost reached $20.000 in December 2017, the cryptocurrency world is full of scams, empty promises, and hacks. Reuters recently reported that just this year, the “hacking of exchanges and trading platforms” reached $925 million in stolen funds. With those numbers in mind, it’s no wonder that the crypto market is plummeting. Some experts even warn of an “imminent implosion.”
Meanwhile, established companies like IBM and Walmart moved beyond the idea of cryptocurrency and adopted the underlying technology, the blockchain, to create some impressive projects.
Also read: ✍Walmart Forces Salad Suppliers to Use Blockchain. You Won’t Guess Why!✍
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