The first quarter of 2018 has seen the crypto markets lose a little more than 48 percent of their Jan. 1 value, with total market cap down from around $612 bln to $261 bln at the first quarter close on March 31, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
Ripple’s (XRP) price has dropped the most of the top five cryptocurrencies listed on CoinMarketCap, down almost 78 percent on March 31 when it traded at $0.51 as compared to its Jan. 1 price of around $2.30.
Second place for largest percentage value drop is Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which lost about 73 percent of its value from its Jan. 1 price of around $2,543 to its March 31 price of around $697.
Litecoin (LTC) is down around 49 percent from its Jan. 1 price of about $231, trading for around $118 on March 31.
Leading cryptocurrencies Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) experienced their worst first quarters since their inception.
Bitcoin’s price has fallen around 52 percent since Jan. 1, when was trading for around $14,122, to around $6,890 on March 31 at the end of the first quarter.
ETH, which was trading at around $755 on Jan. 1, fell about 48 percent to around $394 on March 31.
The drop in prices across the board can be attributed to an increase in regulation from a variety of global actors, including the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) crypto probe, Japan’s scrutiny of unregistered crypto exchanges after the Jan Coincheck hack, and Twitter, Facebook, and Google banning crypto-related ads.
CNBC reported on the historical first quarter crypto losses today, April 3, highlighting a previous March 29 article entirely devoted to Ripple’s poor first quarter performance.
In early January, when Ripple’s price had been around $2.00, CNBC had published an article called “How to buy ripple, one of the hottest bitcoin competitors,” which may have contributed to XRP’s price to jump to over $3.00 in the following few days. CNBC’s apparent Ripple turnaround was commented on by Twitter user @vexmark (Mark Constantine):
Classic pic.twitter.com/17SlDOtZbn
— Mark Constantine (@vexmark) April 2, 2018
BTC is currently trading above $7,000, around $7,375 and up almost 5 percent over a 24 hour period to press time. ETH is up a little over 4 percent over a 24 hour period, trading around $403 to press time.
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