Crypto marked had its Black Wednesday, Bitcoin nose dives to the lowest levels since October 2017

Tanya Abrosimova Independent Analyst

Cryptocurrency market is panic-stricken. The massive sell-off started on Wednesday and gathered pace on Thursday with total market capitalization falling as low as $184B - for the first time since October 2017.

Late on Wednesday, Bitcoin collapsed to $5,312 before recovering to $5,536 by the time of writing. The market cap of the largest digital coin dropped below $100B watermark for the first time in more than a year. BTC/USD is down over 10% on a day-on-day basis.

Potential reasons for Bitcoin crash

This development can potentially lead to a more extended sell-off, according to Naeem Aslam, a chief market analyst at Think Markets U.K.

“After the recent attempt to clear $6,500 bitcoin has lost all its momentum and now we are seeing some very bearish signals,” he said.

Ripple's XRP and Ethereum are fighting for the second place in the cryptocurrency rating. Currently, Ethereum's market cap is registered at $18.5, though Ripple is a close runner-up with $18.2B. The coins have lost 13% and 11% of their respective value in recent 24 hours.

The sell-off is gathering pace as ETH/USD is down 3.3% since the beginning of Thursday, trading at $176.66 at the time of writing; XRP/USD has lost nearly 6% to $0.4477.
Other altcoins are in the same wrecked conditions with Bitcoin Cash losing nearly 20% since this time on Wednesday. BCH/USD is the worst performer of the day, changing hands ar $421 at the time of writing.

Bitcoin Cash is having a hard fork today, which is going to be a messy event.

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