Bitcoin (BTC) and other major cryptocurrencies have fallen dramatically in the wake of a report that
Goldman Sachs is ditching its cryptocurrency trading plans.
After weeks of steady gains, BTC collapsed in price by more than US$300 in the space of less than an hour earlier today, with
Ethereum (ETH),
Ripple (XRP), and
B Cash (BCH) all following its lead. The entire cryptocurrency market cap dropped by more than US$17 billion.
While BTC fell by around 6% over the past 24-hours, the hardest hit by the market shift has been ETH, XRP, BCH and
EOS, which all dropped a whopping 10 to 16%.
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The news comes at a time when the crypto community has been eagerly looking toward Wall Street entities to begin getting into the market, hoping that the influx of institutional money will incite the next bull run.
According to a report from
Business Insider, citing sources familiar with the matter, the
U.S.-based multinational investment bank and financial services company is scrapping previous plans to open up a cryptocurrency trading desk in the coming months.
The Goldman Sachs crypto trading desk was first rumored as far back as October 2017 when
Paul Vigna, a Wall Street Journal reporter, r
evealed that the firm was investigating the possibility of opening a Bitcoin trading platform.
In December 2017 a follow-up report was released by
Bloomberg stating that three separate unnamed sources claimed the cryptocurrency trading platform would be up and running by summer 2018. Summer 2018 came and went, with no announcement from Goldman Sachs.
BTC has lost half of its value in 2018, while overall trading on crypto exchanges has fallen by nearly 80%.
