The cryptocurrency market is taking a pounding
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and all other major cryptocurrencies are continuing their downward slide. The prices of all top 10 coins are down by double-digit percentages in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.
Bitcoin is currently trading at $7,951, a 13.4 percent decline, while Ethereum is at $592, a 14.6 percent drop.
The sell-off is likely a result of an onslaught of bad news for the crypto market, and the continuation of a bearish trend that started in January.
On Wednesday, Google announced it will ban cryptocurrency-related ads on its AdWords platform starting June.
And last week the market was shook by the news of a hacking attempt on popular cryptocurrency exchange Binance, as well as the SEC announcing more stringent regulations for crypto-exchanges (a similar sentiment was expressed during a congressional hearing on cryptocurrencies on Wednesday). It was also revealed that a trustee for the now-defunct crypto-exchange Mt Gox had been selling a large amount of bitcoins on the market since December, likely contributing to Bitcoin's price decline.
Overall, the market cap of all cryptocoins put together is around $317 billion at the time of writing -- a far cry from its January maximum of $835 billion. The last time this number was this low was in early February, when the total crypto market cap briefly fell down to around $281 billion.
Disclosure: The author of this text owns, or has recently owned, a number of cryptocurrencies, including BTC and ETH.
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
