More bad news for the cryptocurrency world I’m afraid – you know the thing you invested in thinking it was going to fly? It’s not flying mate. It’s doing really bad as a matter of fact.
Which one? Three of them: Bitcoin (the one we already knew was down the pan), Ripple and Litecoin.
Thanks to CoinMarketCap’s move to exlucde average-price data from Bitthumb, Coione and Korbit without warning, the cryptocurrency market crashed by a WHOPPING £120 billion – instantly.
CoinMarketCap, the industry’s most famous global index, suddenly decided to remove a group of Korean exchanges from its price calculations.
They wrote on Twitter:
We excluded some Korean exchanges in price calculations due to the extreme divergence in prices from the rest of the world and limited arbitrage opportunity.
We are working on better tools to provide users with the averages that are most relevant to them.
This morning we excluded some Korean exchanges in price calculations due to the extreme divergence in prices from the rest of the world and limited arbitrage opportunity. We are working on better tools to provide users with the averages that are most relevant to them.
— CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) January 8, 2018
Speaking about the total market capitalisation drop from $830 billion to $669 billion, ABC Bullion chief economist Jordan Eliseo said, as reported by The Sun:
The most obvious point is how undeveloped the ecosystem supporting bitcoin and cryptocurrency trading still is.
It highlights the undeveloped nature of trading in Bitcoin, reporting in Bitcoin, market data sources for people to utilise when they’re wanting to track performance or monitor trends in that space.
You can look at it two ways and say Coinmarketcap taking Korean prices out of their averages makes the performance of bitcoin and cryptos look worse than they otherwise would, [but] the flip side is that in the past they weren’t reporting them accurately.
PixabayIt’s fair to say the cryptocurrency community were not happy.
One investor wrote:
Right, might be useful to notify people of things like this before or as you execute to avoid crashing the market, thanks.
Another fumed:
Really unprofessional. You ought to have announced this many days in advance and given fair warning to people who depend no your website for accurate movements in markets.
It was revealed toward the end of 2017, Litecoin founder, Charlie Lee, has sold and donated nearly all of his Litecoin:
Please read the whole post. Reddit thread is here: https://t.co/4xIZl7IC2V pic.twitter.com/VoIlA0Xjj3
— Charlie Lee [LTC] (@SatoshiLite) December 20, 2017
He wrote in a Reddit post:
Over the past year, I try to stay away from price related tweets, but it’s hard because price is such an important aspect of Litecoin growth.
And whenever I tweet about Litecoin price or even just good or bad news, I get accused of doing it for personal benefit. Some people even think I short LTC!
There will always be a doubt on whether any of my actions were to further my own personal wealth above the success of Litecoin and crypto-currency in general.
This is definitely a weird feeling, but also somehow refreshing. Don’t worry. I’m not quitting Litecoin. I will still spend all my time working on Litecoin.
When Litecoin succeeds, I will still be rewarded in lots of different ways, just not directly via ownership of coins. I now believe this is the best way for me to continue to oversee Litecoin’s growth.
Understand none of this? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one. I’m sure it’ll blow over soon enough.
