Prices Drop Across the Board

The cryptocurrency market underwent another sell-off today, although it hasn’t been as drastic (at least for now) as the November 14 price drops. 92 of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization are down in the last 24 hours, and 61 of them have dropped by 10% or more. The total market capitalization has retreated to the $170 billion level and the market as a whole is exploring new 2018 lows.

All coins in the crypto top 10 were affected, although XRP and BTC held up the best. ETH is getting close to the $150 level, where it was last trading in May of 2017.

Bitcoin is trading at around 5,330 USDT on Binance, Bitfinex and OKEx, while it is trading at around $5,250 at Bitstamp, Coinbase Pro and Kraken. The price action did result in an increase in trading volume, although it hasn’t been too drastic – BTC’s 24-hour volume gradually increased from around $3 to to $3.8 billion when the market started dropping. Bitcoin dominance has increased to 54%.

No Obvious Trigger

There have been no major negative news to trigger a sell-off, although speculation of course always accompanies any significant move the market makes. A popular theory is that certain parties are liquidating their BTC to fund mining for the two networks that emerged from the Bitcoin Cash hard fork on November 15, but it’s very hard to say (if we assume it is even happening on a large scale) whether this is a key driver behind the selling pressure.