Ethereum Nosedive to 16 Months Low- Is it a Fundamental Weakness or Price Manipulation

The second largest cryptocurrency by market cap and once a darling for ICO’s, Ethereum is slowly losing its charm. Its been faced by a lot of technical issues and suddenly, projects which were part of it once, have now become independent competitors. But this dive that has wiped Ethereum’s price by almost 45% in a week looks pretty unnatural and hence also raises concerns of price manipulation again.

Ethereum fundamental issues

Over the past 30-days, ETH is -45% vs both USD and BTC, the 5th worst performance of the top-100 coins. Is one believing predictions of onchainfx.com, Ethereum has fallen from market cap rank #2 to #4, overtaken by Stellar and Ripple (based on total 2050 supply) only to recover back to a 3rd position slightly after a midday jump today. The pain of Ethereum is getting deeper as it competitors which once were hosted on Ethereum blockchains have come up stronger. These projects earn points by criticizing Ethereum’s poor scalability, extensive delays in transactions, high transaction costs, vulnerability to hacker attacks in the system of smart contracts which is actually making Ethereum underperform. The other problem with Ethereum is that as the bear market persists, ICOs that raked in the funds last year are now beginning to open up their treasuries, and are increasingly selling large portions of the Ether that they raised through token sales.

Lastly, the founder’s confidence in the project also seems to have shaken up this time. Vitalik in an interview to the Bloomberg said

“If you talk to the average educated person at this point, they probably have heard of blockchain at least once. There isn’t an opportunity for yet another 1,000-times growth in anything in the space anymore.”

While he clarified that stance a day later by this tweet.

With issues sneaking up and competition, growing Ether will have to really work hard to change things for them.

Also, read: Berlin’s Flea Market & Riga’s Wine Shops AcceptingBitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, IOTA & Others

Bitmex price manipulating comments dragging Ethereum

While the problems in Ethereum looked severe the drop in Ether prices for over 45% in a week was really harsh. It was not something that would go down the community very well and price manipulation was highly suspected. On investigation but experts, an activity on Bitmex seems to have triggered this fall. Bitmex’s CEO, Arthur Hayes, appeared to tell his customers, under an official Bitmex account, to short Ethereum. Hayes then goes on to use some very colorful and highly professional language in contrast to his public tweet which said:

“50x leveraged ETHUSD perpetual swap is now live! Trade using only Bitcoin, you never have to touch Ether or USD.”

In other words, Bitmex hates ethereum and as of today, Bitmex is apparently handling $3 billion in trading volumes for the ETH/USD perpetual swap. A number we don’t really believe.

BitMEx CEO also goes on to call Ethereum Shitcoin and this what could have also propelled the Dump in the coin

Is it fundamental or this Bitmex comments that have dragged Ethereum down is something that needs to be seen. Although technically the coin has started picking up back but could be a pullback rally. Only time will tell us how fine Ethereum is prepared to survive the long run battle with its competition

Is Ethereum ready to take on its competition and come out stronger? Do let us know your views on the same.