Crypto roundup, 21 May 2021: Elon Musk effect, crypto crash, Bitcoin prices, $1 trillion wiped out and more

• The cryptocurrency markets witnessed a major upheaval in the week gone by.
• A massive crash in cryptocurrency prices wiped out $1 trillion of wealth, reports suggest.
• Check out everything that happened in the cryptocurrency market last week.
  

The week gone by has seen a lot of upheaval in the world of cryptocurrencies. From China reinforcing its stance against cryptocurrencies to cryptocurrency fans turning against their former idol Tesla’s Elon Musk, a lot has happened in the span of a few days.

Here’s our weekly roundup of the best cryptocurrency news from the week gone by:

Is this the third crypto bubble that has burst?

China’s move to ban financial institutions and payment providers from offering services related to cryptocurrency transactions tanked prices of many cryptocurrencies, including the popular ones like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin and Dogecoin, among others.

And this is not the only piece of news that triggered the fall – Tesla revealed that it will no longer accept Bitcoin as a mode of payment, going back on its earlier announcement.

Most of these cryptocurrencies are still reeling from the after-effects of these announcements – Bitcoin is down by 20% over the last 7 days, Ethereum is down by over 30%, Binance Coin is down by over 36% and Dogecoin is down by over 26%.

Crypto crash wipes out $1 trillion wealth, over 8 lakh traders liquidated

The crypto crash wiped out $1 trillion investor wealth, according to a media report.

In addition to this, over 8 lakh traders liquidated their investments, according to data from Bybt, a crypto tracker.

Bitcoin falls by over 50% from its all-time high

The biggest news, by far, is the snap fall in Bitcoin prices. Triggered mainly by the China ban, Bitcoin touched a low of $31,000 this week. This is more than 50% decline over the all-time high of $64,000 from mid-April this year.

As a result, Bitcoin’s market capitalisation fell under $700 billion for the first time since February, this year.

WazirX and its struggles continue

WazirX continued to feel the heat of sudden surges in traffic in a week that experienced massive buying and selling activity.

Despite being one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in India, WazirX witnessed outage for over an hour on May 19, causing users to vent their frustration on social media.

Two weeks prior to that, WazirX faced another outage that resulted in transaction delays and failures.

The company says it’s trying to solve this with Project Raftaar, but the results will only be visible once the server upgrades are done.

Apart from this, WazirX has now announced that its users will not be able to deposit INR (Indian Rupee) into their accounts. This is likely due to the reported informal diktat from the Reserve Bank of India on Indian banking companies.

As a result of this, WazirX does not have a banking partner to accept and transfer money, leading to the company not accepting deposits for now.

Polygon’s Matic token defies crypto market trends

Polygon’s Matic token, on the other hand, has defied crypto market trends. The token has surged by over 37% in the last 7 days – highest among the over 5,000 cryptocurrencies currently available in the market.

As of May 21, Polygon ranks 17th among the world’s largest cryptocurrencies based on market value, which stands at $3.7 billion.

Polygon was co-founded by three Indian software engineers – Jaynti Kanani, Sandeep Nailwal and Anurag Arjun.

Fake crypto trading apps on the rise

According to security research firm Sophos, there are over 160 fake apps out in the wild masquerading as crypto trading apps. These apps were found to be impersonating popular apps like Kraken, Bittrex and Goldenway.

SEE ALSO:

Cryptocurrency crash brings down Binance, WazirX and other exchanges – users fume as orders fail

Dogecoin surge sends WazirX servers panting for help – users report failed transactions, delays in orders

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