Crypto Washout

• Wall Street Journal – Bitcoin Falls Sharply After Another Cryptocurrency Exchange Is Hacked
  The largest cryptocurrency has lost more than half its value this year

  A South Korean cryptocurrency exchange said it suffered a “cyberintrusion,” prompting bitcoin prices to fall sharply toward year lows. Bitcoin dropped more than 10% over the weekend, falling below $6,700, according to research site CoinDesk. The largest cryptocurrency has lost more than half its value this year, falling by nearly two thirds from its record high near $20,000 in December. Its low for the year came in February at less than $6,000. Other large cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, ripple and bitcoin cash have all fallen more than 11% over the past 24 hours. EOS, the token backed by startup block.one which has raised more than $4 billion, is down 20%, according to research site coinmarketcap.com.

• Ars Technica – Bitcoin has lost more than half its value since last year’s all-time high
  Amid fall, mining energy demand remains so high that Quebec utility halts new orders.

  On Sunday, the price of Bitcoin continued to fall, losing 5 to 6 percent of its value.
  According to CoinMarketCap, since an all-time high of near $20,000 per bitcoin on December 17, 2017, the cryptocurrency has lost more than half of its value, currently trading at around $7,200. Overall, Bitcoin’s price is up by about 150 percent compared with this same time last year, when it was trading around $2,800. Such fluctuations don’t seem to have stopped demand for setting up new mining operations, particularly in areas where electrical power is relatively inexpensive. Demand is so high in one part of Canada that Hydro-Québec, the province’s energy utility, recently said that it would “temporarily” stop accepting energy requests from cryptocurrency mining companies “so that the company can continue to fulfill its obligations to supply electricity to all of Québec.”

• FT Alphaville — Who really owns bitcoin now?
  Long-term holders cashed out to short-term speculators, data show

  The Chainalysis data quantifies this distinct shift in the make-up of bitcoin owners from longer-term investors — those who held the asset for more than a year — to short-term investors who have traded more recently, by analysing how regularly coins have changed hands. Last November — before December’s pricing peak — the amount of bitcoin held for investment was roughly three times that held by traders. However, by April 2018, the data show the amount held by investors — about 6m bitcoin — was much closer to the amount held by short-term speculators, with 5.1m bitcoin. Indeed, Chainalysis estimates that longer-term holders sold at least $30bn worth of bitcoin to new speculators over the December to April period, with half of this movement taking place in December alone.

Summary