It’s been an eventful 24 hours within the world of crypto – and it’s clear that these recent developments have shaken the confidence of some investors.
Welcome to DDW Crypto News, a new weekly feature designed to give you a rundown of the latest and most pressing updates within the world of cryptocurrency. It’s an economy that never stops moving and sometimes it can be hard to keep up – take a breather and check out the latest developments here.
This week, titans have fallen, underdogs have surged, new names have entered the scene and the market as a whole has seen unprecedented movement…
Bitcoin: ‘Flash Crash’ Wipes Hundreds Of Billions From Crypto Market
Anyone with an eye on the market knows that fluctuations in the cost of crypto are nothing unusual, especially when it comes to market leader Bitcoin (BTC).
However, it’s rare that the price falls so far that it kickstarts a chain reaction across its rival currencies, wiping an estimated $200 billion from the value of the market overall – in the last 24 hours, however, that’s exactly what happened.
Just a week on from the news that the value of Bitcoin had reached an all-time high of $67,000, its value dropped below $59,000, causing a wave of panic across Bitcoin backers who were left worried that their investments weren’t as favourable as they initially thought. Questioning the stability and longevity of Bitcoin, some buyers even scrambled to find an ‘out’ as the market continued to appear to struggle.
The news gained traction amongst investors of other cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum, Solana and Cardano, with these currencies also seeing a sharp drop in value – a surprising average drop of between 5-15%.
However, as chaotic as these movements might sound on the face of things, they aren’t entirely out of the blue. It’s not uncommon for the market value of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin to drop drastically following a previous ‘boom’, much like the value increase observed last week. To many investors, such drops are a great opportunity to secure further Bitcoin inventory at a much lower price – a ‘flash crash’ may be seen as a bonus flash sale.
It remains to be seen whether or not the rise in the number of Bitcoin investors due to the price drop will set Bitcoin prices back on a high – one thing we do know, however, is that the market remains as lively and changeable as ever.
‘Meme Coins’ On The Rise
Following the astronomical growth of the crypto market over the last few years, ‘meme coins’ are gaining more traction and popularity than ever.
A trend sparked by the launch of Dogecoin, crypto ‘parodies’ seem to come and go fairly often – though a select few find enough investors to stick around.
The latest currencies to catch on in this way are Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Baby Floki Billionaire (BABYFB), with the value of both rising sharply by 42% and 69% respectively. It follows growing calls for Shiba Inu to be listed on popular trading platform Robinhood, something which looks a little more likely following these latest developments – especially given that Shiba Inu is now the 11th most valuable cryptocurrency in the world.
Whilst the rising popularity of the two was even more apparent against the backdrop of the recent Bitcoin crash, especially once rival coins followed suit, it wasn’t enough to counter the millions wiped from the market overall. Still, there’s no doubt that it was refreshing for investors to see these coins, often not taken quite as seriously, buck this surprising trend and grow during a crash.
Trading Platform Outage
Following the sudden market movements over the last few days, some users have reported that their chosen trading platforms have been running less than effectively.
Amongst those suffering reported outages are platforms such as Coinbase and Binance, with users struggling to load up information whilst attempting to use the apps. Some are reportedly functioning, just far slower than usual.
This doesn’t appear to be a problem that’s set to last, however – rather it’s a predictable reaction to the volatile crypto movements of the last 24 hours. With so many investors scrambling to buy or sell, servers appear to be buckling under the pressure.
Luckily, the likelihood is that normal service should resume shortly – as long as the market settles down soon.
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