Bitcoin Daily: Bitcoin Crashes, Tether Rises

As bitcoin crashed Wednesday, one cryptocurrency remained surprisingly stable. Tether prices have stayed steady since Tuesday, after reaching an all-time high of $1.07 (£0.78) just after 3 a.m. on Wednesday, Express reported. Remarkably, Tether’s market capitalization also gained more than $100 million on Tuesday in just 15 minutes, according to CoinMarketCap.

As for bitcoin, the trouble may not be over. As Reuters reported, Citi analysts said on Wednesday that the world’s best-known cryptocurrency may end up losing 50 percent of its current value, stemming from fears of regulatory crackdowns. Bitcoin, which dipped below $10,000 on Wednesday, could fall into a range of $5,605 to $5,673. And the drop “looks very likely to be very speedy,” the analysts wrote in a research note.

For those stressed by the bitcoin slide and maybe looking for a workout, Sweatcoin has risen to the top of the App Store, TechCrunch reported. During its rise, the startup accumulated more than five million users and increased revenue by 266 percent in the last quarter. As one of the most quickly growing fitness apps in the App Store, it’s behind only the Google Arts & Culture app, which took off over the weekend.

In other news, a lending exchange platform that was long suspected of being a Ponzi scheme by many in the crypto community will shutter its doors, according to TechCrunch. In a release on its website, Bitconnect said it was shutting down due to “continuous bad press” surrounding the platform, two cease and desist letters from the Texas and North Carolina securities boards and continuous distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on the site.

In other cryptocurrency news, Ripple’s fall from its all-time high of $3.84 has erased $44 billion from the holdings of Chris Larsen, co-founder of the currency, CNBC reported. With Ripple trading near $1 Wednesday, Larsen now only holds the equivalent of about $15.8 billion, according to CNBC calculations using figures from Forbes.

Lastly, senators said on Wednesday that they want to include cryptocurrency in legislative discussions. “It is a very critical issue, and I think it is one we will pay a lot of attention to as we try to draft legislation,” Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho said in a brief interview with American Banker.