It has been a brutal couple of days for the global cryptocurrency market, as the price of major players such as Bitcoin and Ethereum crashed following the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin.
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A worldwide selloff erased more than $200 billion of crypto wealth in the space of only 24 hours, Bloomberg reported, citing data from CoinMarketCap. Bitcoin sank by as much as 10% over the past day to hit its lowest point since Dec. 2020. Ethereum shed as much as 16%.
The rout was driven by a massive plunge in stablecoins. TerraUSD, better known as UST, fell as low as 30 cents on the morning of May 11, rebounded to above 80 cents later that night, and had fallen back to about 60 cents on the morning of May 12, according to CoinMarketCap. UST’s sister coin, Luna, lost more than 90% of its value in the past week, the Washington Post reported. The global crypto market shed more than one-quarter of its value over same time frame.
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Crypto kingpin Bitcoin fell below $30,000 on May 11, putting it more than 50% below its all-time high set in Nov. 2021. It currently trades near its 2021 low, which means most investors who bought Bitcoin during its surge in popularity last year are, at least for now, holding losses.
The price of Ethereum also has fallen more than 50% from the all-time high it set six months ago, while Dogecoin and Polkadot were among the cryptos that lost more than one-third of their value in the last 24 hours, according to the Economic Times.
Meanwhile, overall interest in crypto trading appears to be on the wane. On May 10, crypto trading platform Coinbase reported a first-quarter loss of $430 million as active monthly users for the period fell to 9.2 million from 11.4 million the previous quarter.
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The plunge has spread to other markets as well — particularly Asia, where Hong Kong-listed fintech BC Technology Group Ltd. closed down 6.7% on May 11 and Japan’s Monex Group lost 10% for the day.
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: Crypto Crash: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Polkadot Plunge After TerraUSD Stablecoin Collapse
