The global cryptocurrency segment experienced a market-wide sell-off on Wednesday afternoon, losing $25 billion, or 12% of the overall market cap.

The bulk of the losses struck in a brief one-hour window, between 15:30 and 16:30 UTC. The sudden flash dip came as a surprise to say the least, and followed this morning’s $7.5 billion sell-off which, without the benefit of foresight, seemed significant at the time.

Just When We Thought We Were Out…

Now the altcoin setup looks radically different, with several coins threatening the yearly lows of August-September once again following an entire quarter of recovery.

All of Bitcoin Cash’s recent gains have disappeared, with BCH sinking 30% in the last week alone, and close to 20% in the last day. The same pattern persists among all the recent market growers, as yet another great correction unfolds.

BTC/USD Hits 13-Month Lows

Bitcoin did however strike new yearly lows, or thirteen-month lows to be precise, after BTC/USD fell to $5,765 – a level not witnessed since October 2017. That puts BTC on 9.8% losses over less than twelve hours, after falling from this morning’s $6,395.

Of Bitcoin’s $6 billion volume at time of writing, you have to look eleven places down the charts to find the first cryptocurrency that BTC has been significantly traded against. The top ten most concentrated trades are all against either fiat currency (USD and KRW), or dollar-pegged stablecoins – specifically Tether (USDT).

Ethereum Sinks Along With Mining Profits

As covered earlier on Hacked, Ethereum’s initial fall below the $200 mark resulted in Ether mining no longer being profitable. However, the $189 price quoted in the article continued to fall further, landing on $179.49 and resulting in a 14.4% crash for Ethereum from last night’s high of $209.78.

That’s still slightly above the $170 valuation recorded during the dip of September this year, and saves ETH from notching up a new yearly low along with BTC.

Tron (TRX) Threatens Yearly Lows

The value of TRX fell 16% from $0.022358 to $0.018757 for Wednesday, pushing the coin closer to the lows of August when TRX hit the eery number of $0.016666 before rebounding.

This time the price rebounded to the $0.019 level, which is a hopeful sign for the altcoin, although TRX losses now stand at 22.5% for the last seven days.

All of the coin growth surrounding BitTorrent, record transaction volumes, coin listings and everything else that came out of Tron HQ in recent months has now effectively been wiped out.

Few coins were spared the bloodletting, and even the stablecoins were shaken by the sudden sell-off as Tether dipped to the $0.97 range once again. Despite the numbers quoted above, the worst of the losses came from the lesser altcoins, with recent gainer Basic Attention Token (BAT) now down more than 40% for the week.

Disclaimer: The author owns bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. He holds investment positions in the coins, but does not engage in short-term or day-trading.

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