The Fall of the Altcoins: ETH Down 8%, XRP 11%

By Tim Hakki

Polkadot, XRP, Solana, Chainlink, Bitcoin Cash, Theta, Ethereum, SHIB, Dogecoin—this is the list of today’s casualties after the global market capitalization of cryptocurrencies lost $80 billion overnight, dropping from $1.6 trillion to $1.52 trillion. 

 XRP was particularly hard hit. Having depreciated 11% overnight, it currently trades at 70 cents. Promising signs in its lengthy court battle against the US Securities and Exchange Commission aren’t enough to save it. 

In December last year, the US SEC took Ripple to court, alleging it had been selling XRP as an unregistered security. Ripple’s lawyers won a discovery motion, forcing the SEC to share lots of internal documents, including employee emails that relate to the SEC’s internal policies on Bitcoin and Ethereum. This week, the court granted the SEC a lot more time to produce these documents. 

Ethereum, the second-biggest cryptocurrency on the leaderboard, currently runs the risk of falling below $2,000. It sits precariously at $2,055, having dropped 8.07% overnight. The halcyon days of its former all-time high of $4,165 were only last month, but it feels like a lifetime ago. 

Friday’s news that digital asset management company Grayscale may be adding Solana investment products to its inventory has done little to stop SOL’s backslide from the fourteenth to fifteenth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. It fell 12.31% and hit $31.76.

Polkadot’s DOT, the tenth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, finally got listed on Coinbase Pro this week. The “Coinbase Effect'' led to a 16% boost in value for the token on Wednesday, but today it’s down 9% to $19.16. 

The Shiba Inu token was proclaimed a ‘Dogecoin killer’ after it exploded its way into the top twenty cryptocurrencies by market capitalization last month. It also took a hard hit today, falling 10% to a price of $0.00000729. Still, for a meme of a meme, SHIB managed to crawl its way onto Binance and is expected (though delayed) to appear on Coinbase Pro.

Today’s crash has hit the altcoins hard. Bitcoin laughs down from its as-yet uncontested place as number one: it only dropped 5.7% today.

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