Crypto Market in Freefall: Bitcoin Falls 30%, Ethereum Falls 38%

The cryptocurrency market has continued its week-long plummet, with leaders Bitcoin and Ethereum falling through key supports on Wednesday.

Bitcoin plummeted to lows of around $32,100, a drop of 30% over the past 24 hours. Likewise, Ethereum plunged 40% to $2,059. Both cryptocurrencies have recovered somewhat, to prices of $35,368 and $2,489 respectively.

Strikingly, the market’s most liquid stablecoin, Tether, has also been knocked off its dollar peg. USDT fell as low as $0.84 amidst the blood-red market.

The day opened in the red hot on the heels of bearish news coming out of China. A group of Chinese payments and finance associations doubled down on the central bank’s 2017 ban on financial institutions engaging in crypto transactions, and warned investors against speculative crypto trading.

It followed a week in which crypto prices slipped across the board. The week's bearish price action was initially prompted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk's decision to pull Bitcoin as a payment option for the EV firm's products, citing environmental concerns.

The crashing market has seen crypto sites buckling under the pressure, with sites including cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and price checking sites CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap suffering intermittent outages. Crypto exchange Binance has also paused all ETH and ERC-20 withdrawals “due to network congestion,” according to a tweet. 

As traders on Ethereum rush to the exits, gas prices on the number two crypto network have skyrocketed. According to Etherscan, the cost of an average transaction now costs 700 gwei.