Cryptocurrency markets have had a night to forget with heavy declines being seen across the board.
This has reduced the value of the entire market down to US$458 billion according to Coin Market Cap, meaning the market has shed over US$50 billion of value overnight.
The market appears to have come under pressure after a computer glitch allowed users to snap up bitcoin (BTC) for free on Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Zaif. One plucky user picked up a massive US$20 trillion worth of bitcoin according to Fortune, but was prevented from offloading them.
The Zaif exchange is now being investigated by Japan's Financial Services Agency in regards to the security of its system and other business practices.
Unfortunately, this has led to a big sell-off of bitcoin overnight. In fact, BTC was within a whisker of breaking through the US$12,000 mark this time yesterday but is now over 11% lower at US$10,643.80. This has reduced its market capitalisation to US$179.9 billion.
It has been a similar story for the Ethereum (ETH) price. It is down 10% over the last 24 hours to US$842.14. The world's second-largest cryptocurrency now has a market capitalisation of US$82.3 billion.
The Ripple (XRP) price has also fallen heavily. It is down 9.5% since this time yesterday to US$1.02 per coin. The popular altcoin's market capitalisation has dropped to US$39.8 billion.
Bitcoin spin-off Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has been one of the worst performers during the period, tumbling almost 13% to US$1,321.77 per token. The BCH market capitalisation has been reduced to under US$22.5 billion.
But the worst performers over the last 24 hours has been the Litecoin (LTC) price. It is down over 13% to US$213.37, reducing its market capitalisation to US$11.8 billion. With sentiment shifting negative all of a sudden, I wouldn't be surprised to see further declines over the next couple of days for Litecoin and the rest of the market. Hold onto your hats!
