The market sell-off appeared to reach at least a temporary bottom on Tuesday, as — led by the Bitcoin price — cryptocurrencies have made a moderate recovery since marking another day off the calendar.
Early Tuesday morning, the cryptocurrency market cap sunk to $276 billion, its lowest point since November and a mark that Bitcoin itself was valued above as recently as early January.
The downturn correlated with increased regulatory pressure, hostile postures from credit card issuers, and a $4 trillion sell-off in the world stock markets.
At roughly 3:00 UTC, however, the cryptocurrency markets began to tick upward, and by the time of writing they had recovered past the $300 billion threshold to a present value of $319 billion. This still represents a 24-hour decline of more than 11 percent, but it nevertheless provides a bit of respite to the otherwise-floundering markets.
The early morning bump enabled the Bitcoin price to climb back to a present value of $6,922, a nearly $1,000 increase from its daily low, which saw Bitcoin fall below $6,000 for the first time since November 12. Bitcoin now has a market cap of $116 billion, which represents a daily decline of just under 10 percent.
The Ethereum price largely followed its older sibling’s trajectory on Tuesday, declining as low as $565 before recovering to $688 at the time of writing. Ethereum now has a market cap of $66.1 billion, which represents an index-lagging 12 percent decline.
Ethereum was not the only major altcoin to lag the index on Tuesday, but most managed to beat it once the market turned the corner.
The Ripple price declined by seven percent to $0.65, while Bitcoin Cash’s 15 percent decline forced its price down to $840.
Fifth-ranked Cardano posted a two percent decline, which was the best performance among top 10-cryptocurrencies, but sixth-ranked EOS lagged the index and endured a 14 percent blow.
The Litecoin price declined by eight percent to $118, and Stellar held the eighth position in the market cap rankings despite an 11 percent pullback.
NEO and NEM rounded out the top 10 with declines of nine percent and 10 percent, which reduced their prices to $79 and $0.42, respectively.
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