Cryptocurrency price CRASH: Why are Bitcoin, Ripple and Ethereum falling today?

All the world’s major digital currencies, includeing bitcoin, Ripple and Ethereum, are in the red today (Friday, February 2) as the crypto market continues to slide back towards pre-December prices.

The global market capitalisation sat at $382billion this morning - about $102billion less than 11.25am yesterday and a
staggering $445.7billion less than its all time high of $835.7billion last month.

Experts have pointed to a number of possible causes for the crash, which first started on January 8, including threats from governments to limit crypto trading and a spate of recent security breaches.

The market is also still reeling from revelations that cryptocurrency Tether may have been manipulated, after the Bitfinex exchange was subpoenaed by the US Commodity Futures.
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All the world’s major digital currencies, includeing bitcoin, Ripple and Ethereum, are in the red today (Friday, February 2) as the crypto market continues to slide back towards pre-December prices.

The global market capitalisation sat at $382billion this morning - about $102billion less than 11.25am yesterday and a staggering $445.7billion less than its all time high of $835.7billion last month.

Experts have pointed to a number of possible causes for the crash, which first started on January 8, including threats from governments to limit crypto trading and a spate of recent security breaches.

The market is also still reeling from revelations that cryptocurrency Tether may have been manipulated, after the Bitfinex exchange was subpoenaed by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Tether is fixed to the US dollar, so $1 buys one Tether token.

Investors now fear that Tether Limited does not have the reserves of USD needed to support its $2.17billion market cap and that Tether has flooded the market without being propped up by the dollar at all.

Mati Greenspan, a market analyst with eToro told Business Insider: “The claim is — and the claim has been growing lately — that they're not holding those reserves.
"They haven't been incredibly transparent about where they're holding them and how much they're holding in different places."

This has not been confirmed but, if true, could see the Tether price crash dramatically and could in turn drag other cryptos down with it.