Digital currency Ethereum, considered by many to be the biggest rival to Bitcoin, sunk more than 20 percent during Monday’s trading session after suffering an extremely volatile week last week. Last Wednesday the digital currency experienced a “flash crash” during which its price fell from over $300 to 10 cents on Coinbase’s GDAX exchange. On Friday, Coinbase announced that it would credit customers who faced a margin call or stop loss order on GDAX during the flash crash, but this did little to quell fears about Ethereum.
On Sunday, a rumor that the currency’s creator, Vitalik Buterin, had died sent prices plummeting from $329 to $284 before rebounding slightly. This report was refuted by a picture that Buterin posted of himself online on Sunday evening, but Ethereum continued to struggle on Monday, falling to $239.63 on Monday afternoon, according to CoinDesk. Some analysts believe that the fall of Ethereum was unrelated to the rumors and the flash crash, but that it was tied more closely to developments for the currency which clogged the system and called into question whether an upgraded model is needed, and if so, how this would affect the currency. Others speculated that the price devaluation was caused by profit taking after steep price increases encouraged traders to take advantage of their earnings.
Despite the struggles in the past few days, Ethereum is still enjoying a 2,500 percent gain since the start of 2017 and is still up approximately 2 percent in June alone. As compared to Ethereum, Bitcoin was down around 5 percent on Monday, trading at $2,452. Bitcoin is up 153 percent for the year and 5 percent in June according to CoinDesk.