Update 2010ET : Having briefly stabilized after this morning's weakness, cryptos are tumbling once again as Asian markets open.

Bitcoin has broken below $10,000 again...

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While all eyes are on Bitcoin as it slides back towards $10,000, the real mover in the last 12 hours has been Ethereum after flash-crashing around 545amET today.

source:Coin360

Ethereum almost instantaneously collapsed from $262 to $192 before ripping back higher... but is now fading further...

It is unclear if any specific catalyst prompted this collapse but the move in Ethereum followed reports, as CoinTelegraph points out, that the Ethereum smart contract of 0x decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol has been suspended after a vulnerability has been uncovered in its code, the project’s team announced in a Medium post published on July 13.

Per the announcement, third-party security researcher samczsun warned the 0x team about the vulnerability in the exchange smart contract and, after evaluating it, the team suspended the exchange’s contract and the AssetProxy contracts. The vulnerability would have allowed an attacker to fill certain orders with invalid signatures. The announcement reassures that one has exploited this vulnerability and no users have lost their funds.

But, we note that the only consequence is apparently a temporary suspension of the service.

Some have blamed President Trump's tweet for the slide in crypto but that seems a stretch at best...

But we do note that, as Cointelegraph reported yesterday, a draft bill entitled “Keep Big Tech out of Finance” has surfaced online, allegedly from within the United States House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, which could have spooked some short-term traders.

Also the correlation between global negative-yielding debt (perhaps a proxy for how screwed up the world is) and cryptos is holding...

Finally, on a longer-term basis, John McAfee explains what needs to happen for people to use cryptocurrency on a mass scale?

JM: We have to have more friendly user interfaces. You're not going to get the average plumber and give him a crypto wallet and say, “This 150-digit number is an address. It means something. You must copy it somehow or take a picture of this.”

No. Please, God. That scares people. We need something that has a name. Frank Smith. Okay, I want to send Frank Smith 50 Bitcoins or five or a fifth or whatever. That's cool. By the way, I don't think crypto trading is the end-all for crypto. I mean, that might be the entry point, but the end-all is where we f---ing buy things with the crypto that we have, for heaven's sake, rather than trading it constantly. But that's coming... that will come.

I think in 10 years there'll be no fiat anywhere in the world. Everything will be electronic, everything will be cryptocurrency.

In five years, I think the majority of people will be using crypto for the majority of their purchases. I mean, already you can buy houses, cars, almost everything with crypto — some services even.

You can even buy prostitutes — both male and female — with crypto these days. I think in two years time, we're going to see a quadrupling of both the number of businesses that accept crypto and the number of people that are using it not to trade, but to actually buy and sell.

OC: But people also need to be convinced that cryptocurrency is better for them to use than fiat currency.

JM: Here's an example — and if this doesn't sell you, nothing will. Let's say I'm doing business with somebody in England or Germany — in another country — and in order to get started, I've got to make a down payment. All right, so I've got to get out of bed, get dressed, hop in my car, drive to the bank, fill out a bunch of forms, sign them, get approval from the bank and they will say, “Well, within 24 hours, it'll be there.”

Or I can not get out of bed, grab my smartphone — even if I do have to copy and paste a 150-character string — push send and go back to sleep. I've got 60 seconds versus an entire hour.