I think it is fair to say that it has been a disastrous 48 hours of trade for the crypto market with heavy declines being seen across the board.
On Wednesday through to Thursday the market lost 8.5% of its value as traders closed positions in a hurry after reports emerged claiming that Goldman Sachs was pulling the plug on its cryptocurrency trading desk plans.
The selling has carried on over the last 24 hours and led to the market losing a further 6.6% of its value. At the time of writing the entire value of the market is worth US$204.5 billion according to Coin Market Cap, almost 15% lower than its intraweek high.
Interestingly, overnight Goldman Sachs chief financial officer Martin Chavez described reports that the bank was ditching its cryptocurrency trading desk as "fake news" according to CNBC. However, Mr Chavez has stressed that there is no timeline for the bank's plans.
In other news, according to Forbes, there is speculation that U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase could be looking to work together with investment management giant Blackrock to create a cryptocurrency-based exchange-traded fund (ETF).
However, neither of these developments have had any impact on prices today and the majority of coins continue to sink lower.
Here is the state of play on Friday morning compared to 24 hours ago:
The Bitcoin (BTC) price has fallen 7% to US$6,468.75. This decline reduces Bitcoin's market capitalisation to US$111.6 billion.
The Ethereum (ETH) price has plunged 8.1% lower to US$225.01. This has left ETH with a market capitalisation of US$22.9 billion.
The Ripple (XRP) price has defied the market and climbed 1.8% to 29.88 U.S. cents. This has lifted the alt coin's market capitalisation to US$11.85 billion. Ripple is just one of two coins in the top 50 in positive territory.
The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) price is down 6.5% to US$508.49, reducing its market capitalisation to US$8.8 billion.
The EOS (EOS) price has shed 7% of its value and is down to US$5.07. This leaves EOS with a market capitalisation of US$4.6 billion.
Outside the top five it was much of the same. Stellar (XLM) is down 4.3%, Litecoin (LTC) is off 7.1%, Tether (USDT) is 0.2% lower, Cardano (ADA) has fallen 5.3%, and Monero (XMR) has dropped 5.8%.
