The crypto industry just took a huge blow. The young industry is going through one of its most difficult years, defined by the slump in cryptocurrency prices. The market has lost more than $2 trillion from its November 2021 all-time high of $3 trillion. It’s currently valued at $986 billion, according to data firm CoinGecko. The difficulties are reflected particularly in the drop in value of the top two cryptocurrencies since they reached their peaks on Nov. 10, 2021. Bitcoin has lost 72% from its all-time high of $69,044.77. Bitcoin at last check was trading around $19,637. Ether, the native token of the ethereum platform, is down 73% from its all-time high of $4,878.26. Even the industry’s recent ecosystem-software update known as the Merge did not help. The event was considered historic for the sector because it considerably reduced the energy consumption of the ethereum platform. Ether at last check was trading around $1,335. But as if the situation was not already bad, Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange platform, and its native token Binance Coin have been hugely hacked. The Binance Coin hack casts a broad shadow on the crypto industry, which from the start has been plagued by security problems.
Full opinion : Crypto: Spectacular Hack Reinforces Concern About Industry Security.