Technology

Posted on September 12, 2018 by staff

Ethereum loses a third of its value in a week

Technology

Ethereum has crashed to its lowest price for 16 months as cryptocurrencies continued to struggle on Wednesday.

The world’s second most valuable digital currency fell eight per cent to $169 on Wednesday morning – its lowest level since May 2017 – and is down 30 per cent for the week.

Market leader Bitcoin fell 0.8 per cent on Wednesday to $6,234 and it relatively stable compared with the other digital currencies.

XRP is down 2.8 per cent to $0.25, Bitcoin Cash fell 5.5 per cent to $414.79, EOS dropped 1.1 per cent to $4.81 and Stellar is down 5.5 per cent to $0.18.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said over the weekend that “the blockchain space is getting to the point where there’s a ceiling in sight”.

Speaking at the Ethereum Industry Summit conference in Hong Kong, he added: “If you talk to the average educated person at this point, they probably have heard of blockchain at least once.

“There isn’t an opportunity for yet another 1,000-times growth in anything in the space anymore.”

Meanwhile the market crash is now worse than that of the dotcom bubble in 2000.

Judging by the MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index, the market’s value has fallen 80 per cent since its January high.

That exceeds the Nasdaq Composite Index’s 78 per cent decline in 2000.