A sell-off sent the ethereum price plunging below $300 on Monday, forcing the second-largest cryptocurrency to its lowest mark in more than nine months.
Ethereum had traded as high as $323 earlier in the day, but a flurry of sell orders began to pummel the market at approximately 15:00 UTC, driving ETH closer and closer to $300, a level it had not touched since 2017.
Notably, this decline has not just occurred against the dollar, as the ethereum price has also cratered against bitcoin. Just six months ago, ETH was valued at just under 0.1 BTC. Now, its priced at less than half that mark and shows no signs of finding its footing as bitcoin continues to gobble up market share. At a present value of 0.047, ETH/BTC is now trading at levels not seen since mid-December, when the bitcoin price went parabolic and briefly peaked at $19,891 on Bitfinex. Its not entirely clear what drove the sell-off, which is disproportionately large compared to the minor declines exhibited throughout the majority of the rest of the cryptocurrency market.
I assumed that this bubble with Ethereum could collapse. After the hype in 2017 with the ICO companies, this was to be expected. The price of Ethereum last year jumped very much, and now it has returned to the previous levels. I'm not sure Ethereum will be on the horse of popularity now.