I’ve seen international interest in cryptocurrency and now Japan is starting to regulate all cryptocurrency.
The cryptocurrency market has watched in despair as over $60 Billion has left the building in less than a week from a price drop that has ravaged cryptocurrency’s top contenders—Bitcoin (BTC) , Ethereum (ETH) and Ripple (XRP). Investors are watching fearfully as volatility ensues and values—especially that of Bitcoin—is plummeting to unprecedented lows.
Bitcoin’s Value Purge
Bitcoin, while still dominating the crypto market cap, has suffered serious losses in the first weeks of November. The price of a single Bitcoin, which hit almost $20,000 USD late last year, dropped from a long-sustained rate of mid $6K all the way down to levels of $3,604 before rebounding to just above $4K. This presents as the worst Bitcoin drop since April of 2013.
What is Causing Bitcoin’s Deflation?
Analysts have made speculations that Bitcoin’s steep drop is due to the hard fork experienced by Bitcoin Cash in mid-November. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was a previous hard fork from Bitcoin by a group of developers in response to rising fees on the traditional coin, but unlike other crypto separations, Bitcoin Cash has held a successful stance in cryptocurrency since its birth in 2017, rooted at 4th place in the overall crypto market cap.
Hard forks are generally experienced when miners and developers don’t agree on new developments for a particular token. One group stays with the original token while the other creates a new blockchain and an entirely new digital currency.
In the case of Bitcoin Cash, there was much building tension between developers before the November 15th split, propelling investor unease. There was a testy battle between the two parties for the rights to keep the Bitcoin Cash name, but ultimately, the groups became Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin SV.
Also to blame are numerous ICO scams which the SEC has cracked down on. Coming months will determine if the king of cryptocurrency will rebound or will continue to drop.