Ethereum falls below $200 in crypto market selloff

The price of Ethereum has dropped below $200 for the first time in close to a week, falling more than 9% in the last day.

Last Saturday, ETH dropped all the way down to $194 per coin and was seemingly on the way to a recovery, eventually breaking $200 and reaching a high point of $214 on Tuesday. Since then, however, Ethereum has been heading south, along with the price of Bitcoin.

The market was seemingly spooked by the unexpected movement of Satoshi Nakatmo-era Bitcoins yesterday. Following the news, the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply. Though it recovered throughout the course of the day, it’s now dropped again by 5% and even dipped below $9,000 momentarily. That movement appears to have had an effect on altcoins, including Ethereum, which is currently trading for just $195.

And while likely unrelated to the price movement, it probably doesn’t help that one of the most popular digital assets on the Ethereum network, CryptoKitties, announced today that they are parting ways with the blockchain that birthed them. The crypto collectibles are now migrating to their own blockchain, Flow, built by Dapper Labs, the creators of CryptoKitties. At one point, those collectible kitties were so popular, the demand crashed the Ethereum network.

But the last few days haven’t been all bad for Ethereum.

Hope for the long-awaited Ethereum 2.0—which will potentially increase scalability and change Ethereum’s consensus model to proof of stake (PoS)—was reignited after Prysmatic Labs reported that it’s Ethereum testnet Topaz now boasts more than 29,000 validators, staking more than 1 million ETH tokens.