Commodity Blog

Bitcoin (BTC) prices slumped 8% on Wednesday, dragging the whole cryptocurrency market down with it, losing 8% of its total market cap. All major coins lost ground, with some of the top 10 coins losing as much as 15%. A major sell-off has been given as the main reason for the drop, although US and Canadian regulators have launched major investigations into at least 70 cryptocurrency investment schemes.

Bitcoin prices are more volatile than experienced investors are used to, but prices slid to a low of $7,507.88, shedding 8% from the start of the day and nearly 10% over the course of the past week. Prices had recovered slightly, reaching $7,595 at 21:00 GMT.

Ethereum (ETH), which is Bitcoin’s closest rival, had fallen 11% to $593.96 while Ripple (XRP) fell 8.3% down to $0.611. Other top 20 coins with notable movement include EOS, which has its mainnet release at the start of June, shed 13.85% down to $11.08.

In the top 50 coins, 0x and Bitcoin Private (BTCP) were the only two tokens to see gains, increasing 19.25% and 1.68% to $1.48 and $19.46 respectively.

Some investors had expected a bull run following last week’s week-long Consensus blockchain conference, but prices have fallen since then.

The US and Canadian governments have launched a large scale investigation into potentially fraudulent Bitcoin investment schemes in recent days. The investigation will look at more than 70 schemes, but most people see this as a positive movement in the unregulated crypto market. The Securities and Exchange Commission have recently taken action against companies for using fraudulent details, misleading advertising campaigns, and for illegally and unlawfully using images of celebrities, claiming that they had invested in schemes that they hadn’t.

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