The sell-off in cryptocurrencies resumed Sunday afternoon ET with most major coins down plunging 20% to 30% or more in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market value, is a bright spot only in comparison, being down a mere 16%. Both bitcoin and ether, the second-largest crypto that is down 15%, have now lost half their value from all-time highs set last month.
In recent trading, the price of bitcoin was at $32,297.15, down 14.95%. Earlier in the afternoon it had reached as low as $31,179.69, all but wiping out year-to-date gains. At press time, ether was at $1868.79, down 17.8% after falling as low as $1,733.58. Even with today’s drop, ether is still up 159% year-to-date.
According to Nick Mancini, analyst at crypto sentiment analytics platform Trade the Chain, the specific reason for today’s bloodbath was news from crypto exchange Huobi, which said it’s scaling back some of its offerings in some countries due to China’s increasingly hard line on crypto.
“Right after the news broke, short term Bitcoin sentiment scores plummeted to levels not seen since May 19th, this was followed by a drop in price,” Mancini wrote.
The moves by Huobi are the first concrete steps by a crypto company in response to China’s crackdown and it appears to be making the hard line much more real to investors.