The new year is just 10 days old and already Bitcoin (BTC) has seen another quick drop in price. After hovering just over the $4,000 mark, the digital currency fell below $3,700 as of Thursday. BTC wasn’t the only asset to suffer, as other top cryptocurrencies were also down in terms of price.
According to Cointelegraph’s report, the top 20 cryptocurrencies each had “several losses in the 24 hours to press time.” It included not only Bitcoin seeing a price drop of over nine percent, but Ethereum (ETH) was down by 15.85 percent and Litecoin (LTC) was down by 16.53 percent. Other crypto assets with major losses included NEO down by just over 16 percent and Cardano (ADA) down over 18 percent.
As of Tuesday, Bitcoin reached a mid-week high of just over $4,100. One week ago the price was $3,888. Meanwhile, Ripple (XRP) moved past Ethereum in terms of overall market cap for cryptocurrency. As Cointelegraph indicated in their report, Ripple now has a market cap of $13.57 billion, while Ethereum’s is at $13.3 billion based on the latest price action. That makes Ripple the second-largest cryptocurrency in terms of market cap.
Even with that news, Ripple was still among the cryptocurrencies that saw lower prices recently. It was down to $0.33 as of the Cointelegraph report. XRP started the week at $0.364 and was also at a recent high of $0.381 on the charts.
The overall combined market cap for all crypto is also down considerably when compared to a week ago. It was at $130 billion then and was at approximately $122 billion as of today’s report.
The crypto price drops come as a few pieces of recent news arrived. One of those involved DX.Exchange, a Nasdaq-powered cryptocurrency and tokenized stock exchange. There was a “critical vulnerability” on this stock exchange which “leaked sensitive user data,” per Cointelegraph. However, that has now been patched to prevent any further issues.
In addition, a number of tobacco shops in Paris, France are now selling Bitcoin. These shops are selling different tickets to customers for 50, 100, or 250 euros. The tickets contain a QR code or alphanumeric code which the customers can use to get Bitcoin. However, there is still some regulatory uncertainty despite the sales initiative.
