BITCOIN prices are tumbling today amid a series of significant hacks and government clampdowns. The market has dropped down significantly today but what is the price of bitcoin now?
The cryptocurrency market, particularly bitcoin, is suffering heavily this morning, with almost $17 billion being wiped clean off the market in 24 hours.
BTC has dropped 6.54 percent today to trade at $6,291.80 as of 3pm today.
The market is seeing significant losses as well, losing much of the gains made over the last few days.
Ethereum is trading 10.90 percent down at $475.65, with Ripple trading for $0.502136. Litecoin is down to $87.56.
Several widespread hacks have seen investors selling off their coins to keep their money safe, with exchanges cracking down and money laundering schemes.
Why is bitcoin crashing?
Bitcoin suffered another major blow with the recent attacks on South Korean exchanges Bithumb and CoinRail, two of South Asia’s biggest exchanges.
The digital coin has lost more than $580 on the day so far.
The market was still in its bear cycle in mid-June but the continued breaches have seen big losses across the market.
Last week, the cryptocurrency market had seen a positive upswing in momentum, posting strong results until investors panicked after the hack.
Bithumb was taken for more than $30 million earlier this week in a targeted hack against the exchange.
The Bithumb team released a statement saying: “After the incident occurred on June 20, Bithumb quickly followed the procedure to immediately report the incident to KISA announcing that about 35 billion Korean Won worth amount of cryptocurrency was stolen.
“However, as we undergo recovery process on each cryptocurrency, the overall scale of damage is getting reduced.
“Hence, we expect that the overall damage will be less than the amount we initially expected.”
The hack was not actually that much of a significant hit to Bithumb itself, with the attackers stealing roughly six percent of the company’s total funds.
Bithumb has said they will be perfectly capable of reimbursing their investors in the short-term.
Despite this drop in price, some analysts are encouraging investors to remain optimistic towards the rest of 2018.
Luis Carranza, founder of London Fintech Week told that crypto has come a long way in 2018 and there are plenty of reasons to be “optimistic”.
He said: “Crypto is unpredictable. There are massive spikes and drops. $4500 could be the bottom, but there is nothing preventing $2500 from being the bottom.
“Likewise, as crypto becomes more mainstream the price tends to rise.
“Even if the price drops to $1000 there’s nothing preventing another surge to $14,000.”
Read mlore at: Express
