$15B In Crypto Value Disappears In Market Flash Crash

Cryptocurrencies fell fast in just a few hours due to a flash crash that wiped out $15 billion.

According to News BTC, the crypto markets fell more than 6 percent over a day, with bitcoin kicking it off by shedding $300 in just over an hour and 4.5 percent on the day. And as BTC points out, since all cryptos are tied together, if a big one falls, they all do — and often harder.

For example, Ethereum dropped 5 percent, while Ripple fell 5.2 percent as almost $1.5 billion was removed from its market cap. The biggest fall in the top 10 cryptos was IOTA, which lost almost 12 percent, wiping out $600 million from its market cap.

In addition, Bitcoin Cash was down 7.8 percent, EOS was down almost 9 percent, Cardano fell almost 8 percent, Ontology lost over 10 percent, OmiseGO slid 9 percent, and Zilliqa and Aeternity both fell over 9 percent on the day.

So what caused this flash crash? One potential cause could be the fact that the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission has subpoenaed several large exchanges, including Coinbase, Kraken and Bitstamp as it investigates alleged price manipulation.

Another factor could be that Korean crypto exchange Coinrail lost more than $40 million in altcoins after it was hit by an attack this past weekend.

According to TechCrunch, while Coinrail is one of its smaller exchanges, the hackers still made off with $19.5 million worth of NPXS tokens that were issued by payment project Pundi X’s ICO.

They also stole $13.8 million from Aston X, an ICO project building a platform to decentralize documents; $5.8 million in tokens for DENT, a mobile data ICO; and over $1.1 million from Tron, a project from China.

It isn’t clear how Coinrail will go about compensating its customers, or if it will do so at all.

TechCrunch also pointed out that since Coinrail is so obscure, it is unlikely that it could have caused the flash crash.