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The crypto space has been plagued by bad news today.
In the early morning, it was revealed that Cryptopia had been hacked and may be shut down long term. There are some allegations that this is an exit scam rather than a hack. Cryptopia had been used as the main exchange for numerous small-cap altcoins, and this hack may be a critical blow to such coins.
The panic from multiple different small-cap cryptocurrencies collapsing due to the loss of Cryptopia has been enough to tinge the entire crypto space with negativity. The total crypto market cap declined from $124 billion to $122.5 billion throughout the day after the Cryptopia news broke, with Bitcoin (BTC) declining from $3,670 to $3,630.
Then things got worse.
Ethereum’s (ETH) dev team delayed the Constantinople hard fork indefinitely due to a critical security bug. This delay comes only a day before the scheduled deployment of the fork. This creates a confusing situation where users who were urged to upgrade to Constantinople must now upgrade again to get rid of Constantinople.
There is fear, uncertainty, and doubt throughout the Ethereum (ETH) community, and the integrity of the fork’s code is being called into question. Already the Constantinople fork was to be tension filled due to the disenfranchisement of miners, and this delay may inflame the situation and make a negative outcome more likely.
After news broke of the critical security bug in Constantinople and the subsequent delay, Ethereum (ETH) quickly dropped from $130 to $120 (8 percent). Bitcoin (BTC) quickly dropped from $3,630 to $3,530 but has since recovered to $3,575. The total cryptocurrency market cap declined another $2 billion to $120.5 billion, down $4 billion (3.2 percent) on the day.
All other major cryptocurrencies are down as well today. Ripple (XRP) is down two percent, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is down four percent, Bitcoin SV (BSV) is down five percent, EOS is down three percent, Stellar (XLM) is down three percent, Litecoin (LTC) is down four percent, Tron (TRX) is down three percent, Monero (XMR) is down two percent, Dash is down four percent, and Dogecoin (DOGE) is down three percent.
The CBoE Bitcoin futures contract expiration is tomorrow Jan. 16, and although a less significant event than the CME Bitcoin futures contract expiration, it could also be a force behind today’s Bitcoin (BTC) price decline.
The fallout from the Cryptopia hack and Ethereum (ETH) Constantinople fork delay will likely result in additional negative market fallout over the next day. We’ll be watching and reporting.
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