Crypto Selloff Continues As Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, And Friends Shed Over 10%

It’s time for a quick market update on the state of popular crypto projects. We don’t bring you many of these notes, mostly because crypto is comically volatile. But there are times when the red ink runs so thick that we have to mark the moment.

After all, pools of capital have formed around the lip of crypto, pumping dollars into projects that are accreting talent and hype. A16z has a dedicated crypto fund now, ICOs are still happening, and Coinbase is making big moves. Crypto is still a big deal in Startup Land.

But it’s not a great day for cryptocurrency bulls. Here’s some of today’s carnage, pulled from the ubiquitous CoinMarketCap, tracking 24-hour changes as of the time of writing:

• Bitcoin: -11.47 percent
• Ethereum: -12.10 percent
• XRP: -19.41 percent
• Bitcoin Cash: -17.81 percent
• EOS: -21.65 percent

This dip is no simple one-day drop. Today’s declines have pushed the total market cap of crypto to its lowest point since November of 2017. That means that all the end-of-2017 exuberance has been deleted, and more. This is crypto’s lowest mark of the year.

There’s even more bearish news. As bitcoin creeps back towards a full 50 percent of aggregate crypto market cap (it’s at 49 percent today, up from lows in the low thirties), alternative cryptos appear quite weak; after all this time, all those projects and investment and development work will have generated, in sum, a collection of code that is worth less than  bitcoin, which itself failed at its initial concept of providing a durable, digital currency.

A lot of smart people are working in crypto. Many intelligent investors are supporting them. But today, market momentum is against the lot.