It all started with Elon Musk who stated that electric vehicle maker Tesla will not accept bitcoin as payment. This was after he had conducted a poll on Twitter asking if Dogecoin should be accepted as payment. Despite the majority favoring acceptance of Dogecoin, he said Tesla will not.
While Musk started it, the last nail in the coffin was China. It was one of the few countries in favour of cryptocurrencies. On Tuesday, China said it is banning financial institutions and payment companies from providing services related to cryptocurrency transactions. It also warned investors against speculative crypto trading. This led to investors dumping the cryptocurrency.
There was another twist to this when Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin announced he burned 90 percent of his Shiba Inu holdings and donated the rest. This also added fuel to the fire.
The popular cryptocurrency plunged to $30,201.96 in the last 24 hour. At 9.47pm, Bitcoin was trading at $35,773.95. The market valuation of BTC was at $669.44 billion. It traded around $30,000 in January.
Ethereum dipped to $1,902.08 at a 24-hour low. At 9.50 pm IST, the cryptocurrency was trading at $2,521.68.
In the case of meme-based coin Dogecoin, it touched a low of $0.21 in the last 24 hours. At 9.52 pm IST, it was up and trading at $0.34, according to Coindesk.
