Bitcoin dips below $8k as crypto markets tumble

Bitcoin is trading at $7,651 as of press time. This is a drop of more than 8% over the past 48hours. The 24-hour trading volume for the crypto has been hovering between $4 and $6 billion in the past seven days. This is a significant drop from the volumes seen earlier in the month.

Despite a strong indication that Ethereum was on a rise in April, it has shed almost 7% of its value in the past 48 hours. It is trading at $603 having closed on Tuesday, May 22^nd, at $647. This current drop means that the cryptocurrency market is trending on the negative and threatening to wipe out the over 100% gain made in early May.

Bitcoin sheds as the crypto market follows suit

Altcoins such as Cardano, TRON and EOS are all on a downward trend for the past 24 hours. According to data from coinmarketcap, the top 10 cryptos have lost between 7 and 11% in the past 48 hours. Bitcoin Cash which had reached a high of $1,800 in early May has since dropped to $1,043 which is more than 15% drop in just 48 hours. BCH has failed to sustain a high price despite last week’s upgrade to increase its block size to 32MB from 8MB and also reactivate formerly disabled Op codes. The drop of BCH is a reflection of the wider crypto market performance which is on a decline.

Ripple was trading at $0.619 at the time of press having dropped by more than 5% in 24 hours. The altcoin was commanding a high price of $0.92 earlier in May. The negative performance of the cryptocurrencies suggests that despite the increased provisions to facilitate mainstream investment in the crypto world, more robust regulations, guidelines and clarity are still needed for traditional financial sector capital to be injected.

The performance of Bitcoin in global markets

At the beginning of this week, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said that it is planning to provide more strict guidelines for the crypto market. The Bitcoin Futures on both the CBOE and CME started the day, May 23^rd, in the red. CBOE’s June contract XBTM8 has gone down by 3.79% to $7,865. CMEs, BTCK8 has gone down by 4.1% to $7,845.

According to a new report made by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in China, the Chinese government is increasingly becoming concerned that there are new emerging risks in the crypto space. According to the ministry, a new study which was led by the government shows that there are certain risks which can no longer be ignored especially with regards to pyramid schemes, ICOs, and fraud. The study found that more than 420 fake cryptocurrencies exist in China’s altcoin space.

The performance of Bitcoin so far

In December, Bitcoin an all-time high price of $20,000. A few weeks later in January 2018, the market cap of the entire crypto market was approaching the $700 billion mark. Since January, the crypto market has never recovered. On February 6^th, Bitcoin touched a new low of $6,000 while the market cap of the total cryptos was at $276 billion. In the past few weeks, the crypto space is on a downward trend given that the market cap was at $470 billion on May 6 and it is now at $348 billion, a new low for the month.