Market Wrap: Cryptocurrencies Lost More Than $7B In 24 Hours

The cryptocurrency market has lost over $7.2 billion in market capitalization in less than 24 hours at press time.

What Happened

The market saw a massive sell-off at around 1:30 PM on Monday that reduced the market capitalization by 2% from $194.3 billion to $187.1 billion in the course of 10 minutes, according to CoinMarketCap data.

The overall market value has further reduced to $186.8 billion at press time.

According to CoinDesk, the sell-off could be a response to a recent report published by cryptocurrency research firm Chainalysis.

In a report earlier on Monday, Chainalysis said that a Ponzi cryptocurrency scheme called Plus Token could be responsible for driving down the price of bitcoin over the last year.

Chainalysis said that it tracked down and 45,000 BTC and 800,000 ETH stolen from unsuspecting users that were transferred to Plus Token's own accounts.

The research firm said the fraudulent company is still holding on to 790,000 ETH and 20,000 BTC, worth about $149.1 million at current market price, while the rest has been cashed out.

The fact that the scammers are still holding on to such a large amount of cryptocurrency could drive down the price further, according to Chainalysis analysts. This could, in turn, affect the overall investor sentiments.

Price Action

Bitcoin traded 2.54% lower at $6,956.98.

The other cryptocurrency that the scammers are reportedly holding, ethereum, was hit worse trading at $133.11, a 6.20% loss.

XRP (Ripple) was down 6.77% at $0.1995.

Other major cryptocurrencies were similarly down.

Stablecoin Tether was up 0.18% at $1.01, trading a cent above its intended price of $1. Tezos traded 5.31% higher at $1.74.