Tuesday, Jan. 15 — following a brief period of recovery yesterday, all of the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization are falling again. The only exception to this are two stablecoins Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC), which are currently in the green.
Market visualization from Coin360
As of press time, Bitcoin (BTC) is down 2.34 percent on the day, to trade at $3,615. The leading cryptocurrency started the day above the psychological threshold of $3,700, while on the weekly chart the highest price point was registered on Jan. 9 at $4,107.
Bitcoin 7-day price chart. Source: Cointelegraph Price Index
The second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, Ripple (XRP) has lost almost 3 percent of its value over the last 24 hours, currently trading at around $0.32. XRP did not experience significant price fluctuations today, but it is significantly down from the intraweek high of $0.38 seen on Jan. 9.
Ripple 7-day price chart. Source: Cointelegraph Price Index
Ethereum (ETH) — which is currently ranked the third largest crypto by market cap — is suffering a slump, having lost around 7.5 percent over the last 24 hours. At press time, the altcoin is trading at around $119.
As Cointelegraph reported earlier, Ethereum’s much-anticipated Constantinople upgrade has been delayed until at least the next week, following the discovery of a critical security vulnerability that it could unexpectedly introduce to the network.
Ethereum 7-day price chart. Source: Cointelegraph Price Index
All of the other top 20 cryptocurrencies are also firmly in the red, displaying dips ranging from two to over 7 percent. The sole exception are stablecoins USDT and USDC, which are up by 0.06 and 0.45 percent respectively, according to CoinMarketCap data.
The total crypto market capitalization is around $120.5 billion at press time, down from its intra-week high of $138.6 billion.
Total market capitalization 7-day chart. Source: CoinMarketCap
A Jan. 14 report by research firm Diar has shown that cryptocurrency exchanges have closed 2018 with “record transacting volumes.” Both the number of trades and the trade volume have purportedly significantly increased on major crypto exchanges in 2018, compared to 2017 figures.