RT – March 15, 2018: The cryptocurrency market crashed on Thursday (March 15) with Bitcoin plunging to a five-week low. The broad sell-off followed Google’s plan to ban cryptocurrency advertising the day before.
It took more than 24 hours for the crypto market to react to the news, but major cryptocurrencies saw double-digit percent losses on Thursday.
Bitcoin slid 13 percent to $7,950 for the first time this month. The second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum fell below $600 – losing over 57 percent in value since peaking above $1,400 at the beginning of the year.
Ripple and Bitcoin cash both tumbled by more than 13 percent. All but two of Coinmarketcap’s top-100 cryptocurrencies were trading lower on Thursday.
On Wednesday (March 14), Google announced it would ban all cryptocurrency ads “including but not limited to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets and cryptocurrency trading advice.” The move followed the same decision by Google’s main advertising rival, Facebook, which had announced the ban in January.
And the cryptocurrency excitement was further hampered by last week’s news that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had warned investors that cryptocurrency exchanges were not regulated.
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