Crypto Currency Market Continues Slow Decline

The crypto currency market continued its slow decline on Wednesday with all major coins showing a 5-7% drop apart from Ethereum and Ethereum Classic which rose by around 5% overall. This was not enough to stop the drop in other altcoins as losses were registered all across the board with the total market cap of crypto currencies now closer to $500 billion - an almost 40% drop from its steep high of $810 billion in December.

Bitcoin continued declining from around $10,500 to the $9800 mark on Thursday morning possibly ready to test the $8000 levels sometime soon. The continued fallout from the Tether announcement has had a seriously negative effect on the market and this has led to a continued dip in investment confidence across the board with resultant heavy drops in the price. In fact Bitcoin has declined by well over 10% since the start of the week.

Other major coins such as Dash and Litecoin have also registered steep drops with Litecoin now trading at around $153 whilst Dash is struggling to come close to the $700 mark - it is currently mired at around $650 and is expected to drop further. Ripple did not drop that much over the past 24 hours but it is still coming perilously close to the $1 mark and is currently trading at around $1.05-1.08. Bitcoin Cash also dropped considerably from around $1500 to %1400 or a drop of 5%.

The only exception to this massive sell off is the Ethereum and Ethereum Classic currencies which are showing a small increase day on day. In fact, the former was up by 5% over Wedmesday night and Thursday morning and settled at around $1100. The latter had a similar 5% rise during the day but then fell back to the $26-27 mark.

Ethereum slightly out-performed Bitcoin for the day, and it is notable that the Ethereum price held above the $1,000 mark even at the height of Tuesday's Tether-linked volatility. Nevertheless, the second-largest cryptocurrency still declined five percent to $1,114, which translates into a $108.5 billion market cap.

Ripple's XRP token endured a seven percent decline, while the Bitcoin Cash price dropped by eight percent. Both of these single-day movements were attractive, however, compared to that of Cardano, which plunged by 13 percent to $0.49. EOS and NEO each took a nine percent hit, while Stellar fell by five percent to outperform its peers. Litecoin fell back to ninth in the market cap rankings following its six percent decline, while NEM's 12 percent pullback to $0.79 rounded out the top 10.

There has been good news emanating from the market but that does not seem to have had an effect on the crypto currency market in the short term. South Korea's finance minister has confirmed the government has no plans to shut down cryptocurrency trading or exchange platforms. After weeks of confusion and panic among Korean investors, traders and adopters of cryptocurrencies fearing a sweeping government ban akin to China, the country's finance minister has today stressed that the government has no plans to introduce crippling curbs on the cryptocurrency market. Instead, the government's immediate focus will delve into regulating cryptocurrency exchanges, according to the official. This has still not lifted the markets however which have continued to dip, albeit at a slower rate than the steep falls of mid-January where almost 100 billion were wiped off the total crypto currency market cap