The fall of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
began on Sunday, June 10, 2018, when the South Korean stock exchange CoinRail announced a hacking attempt. Coinrail managed to save 70% of assets that were moved to cold storage during the security audit. The exact cost of stolen cryptocurrencies and tokens has not yet been named
to CoinRail, but according
to the Pundi-X project, which helps the exchange to investigate what happened, the damage is about $ 37 million.
After a slight rise, the fall in currencies continued on Wednesday. In parallel, the cost of the second largest market capitalization of Ethereum cryptocurrency, decreased by almost 11%, Ripple - by 10%. The last time the cost of Bitcoin was the same low in February 2018.
Hacker attacks and cryptocurrency costs
Over the past few years, cryptocurrency exchanges have become one of the main goals of cybercriminals. They are attractive to hackers not only by rapidly growing assets, but also because of the
imperfections of the security systems of such sites.
Hacker attacks create a negative news agenda around the cryptocurrency market, encouraging tokens and cryptocurrency owners to part with them as soon as possible. In such circumstances, the currency is sold at a lower price, which causes the market to fall. After some time, the news loses its relevance, the stock exchange reports on the improvement of protection and the cost of bitcoin may rise again.
In addition to the activities of hackers, reports on sanctions and changes in the regulation of the cryptographic market have a tangible effect on the market. Thus, the growth of Bitcoin in December 2017 and in January 2018 followed the news about changes in cryptocurrency regulation in 4 countries at once: South Korea, Russia, China and the UK.
Other reasons for price changes
Despite the situation that could have been observed during previous hacker attacks, not all experts associate the new recession with the problems of Coinrail: this exchange has a small daily trading volume and is considered medium-sized. “I don’t think it’s related to any specific news, or to the general downtrend after 2017,”
commented Bloomberg material Kyle Samani, managing partner in Austin, Texas, crypto-hedge fund Multicoin Capital.
Specialists from the blockchain-startup Chainalysis
substantiate the trend of reducing the cost of bitcoin by redistributing crypto-assets between long-term holders and “speculators” (beginners).
The researchers came to the following conclusion: the decline was triggered by the fact that in the period from December 2017 to April 2018, bitcoin holders sold a significant part of their assets to new users. Such a redistribution led to the fact that the market divided equally among those who save currency and those who constantly buy and sell it. Previously, the so-called “investors” (long-term holders) were one and a half times larger.
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