Crypto markets are seeing significant losses across the board, with all top ten coins by market cap in the red, as Coin360 data shows.
Market visualization by Coin360
Bitcoin (BTC) is trading around $7,846 as of press time, down more than 4 percent over the 24 hour period. Trading volume for BTC has hovered between 5 and 6 bln for the past week, significantly down from volumes earlier this month.
Bitcoin price chart. Source: Cointelegraph Bitcoin Price Index
Ethereum (ETH) has seen a loss of almost 10 percent over the 24 hour period, trading at $618 to press time. The dip brings the altcoin’s monthly value change into the negative, threatening to reverse what had been astonishing monthly gains of over 100 percent in early May.
Ethereum price chart. Source: Cointelegraph Ethereum Price Index
Other major altcoins - including Cardano, IOTA, TRON, and EOS - are all seeing 24 hour period losses of between 8 and 11 percent, as data from Coinmarketcap shows.
Having rallied as high as $1800 in early May, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has failed to sustain higher valuations, falling almost 9 percent in the 24 hour period and trading around $1039 to press time. The dip comes despite last week’s upgrade to increase BCH’s block size from 8MB to 32MB and reactivate formerly disabled Op codes, suggesting the coin’s performance is mirroring a broader market decline.
Bitcoin Cash price chart. Source: Cointelegraph Bitcoin Cash Price Index
The markets’ negative performance suggest that despite increasing provisions to facilitate mainstream investment in the crypto space, notably with a recent trend to provide custodian solutions for institutional holders, more robust regulatory guidelines and clarity are still needed for traditional financial sector capital to come in.
At the beginning of this week, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced it plans to provide tighter guidance for the crypto market. Futures on CBOE and CME are both in the red this morning, May 23, with CBOE’s June contract XBTM8 down 3.79 percent to $7,865.00, and CME’s May contract BTCK8 down 4.10 percent at $7,845.00.
In Asia meanwhile, a new report issued by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, reiterated the Chinese government’s concerns about “certain risks that cannot be ignored” in regards to ICOs, pyramid schemes, and fraud, with a new government-led study detecting 421 fake cryptocurrencies in China’s crypto space.