It has been an horrific night of trade for the crypto market with significant declines being seen across the board.
This has led to the crypto market losing an astonishing 13.5% of its value since this time yesterday, leaving it with a combined market capitalisation of US$182 billion according to Coin Market Cap.
What happened?
The crypto market is in freefall this morning and it isn't immediately obvious why.
According to Brian Kelly from BKCM, he told CNBC that uncertainty around the Bitcoin Cash hard fork which is scheduled today has been a catalyst for the decline.
The Bitcoin spin off will split into two later today after developers disagreed on the best way to scale the digital currency. It was down 18% ahead of the fork and appears to have spooked the market.
In addition to this, Forbes has suggested that the selloff was caused by the Bitcoin price crossing an ultra-bearish technical analysis indicator.
According to the report, an indicator known as the "death cross" was seen for the first time since December 2014.
The death cross is a technical analysis signal that points to the potential for a major selloff. It occurs when an asset's short-term moving average crosses below its long-term moving average.
Here is the state of play on the market on Thursday compared to 24 hours ago:
The Bitcoin (BTC) price has crashed 12.5% lower to US$5,568.56 per coin. This decline reduces the world's largest cryptocurrency's market capitalisation to US$96.76 billion.
The Ethereum (ETH) price has dropped 15.3% to US$175.16 per token. This has reduced Ethereum's market capitalisation to US$18.1 billion.
The Ripple (XRP) price is down a sizeable 12.2% to 44.7 U.S. cents. This decline leaves XRP with a market capitalisation of US$17.99 billion.
The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) price has plunged 17.6% lower to US$428.23 per token ahead of its hard fork. This decline has left the Bitcoin spin off with a market capitalisation to US$7.5 billion.
The Stellar (XLM) price has crashed 13.7% lower to 22.22 U.S. cents per token. This has reduced the XLM market capitalisation to US$4.2 billion.
Outside the top five the declines continued. The EOS (EOS) price has fallen 13.3%, Litecoin (LTC) dropped 15%, Tether (USDT) is down 2%, Cardano (ADA) has plunged 15.9%, and Monero (XMR) has crashed 16% lower.
