Crypto bounce back from flash crash - Reasons why we saw the drop

While the headlines of a crypto crumble hit the search engines, the market began its bounce back to yesterday's prices.

Mulitple reasons were suspected for the crash this morning.

As Zero Hedge notes:

Bloomberg reports that South Korea's Financial Services Commission Chairman Choi Jong-ku said in a speech text:

-There’s high possibility cryptocurrency transactions could be used in money laundering.
-South Korea to suspend virtual account- related operations of banks if they are found to have broken laws related to cryptocurrency.
-Regulator also strengthen probe into cryptocurrency exchanges over price manipulation, money laundering, pyramid scheme.
-Side effects of cryptocurrency "serious"; regulator will consider all measures including shutdown of cryptocurrency exchanges.
-Cryptocurrency fever in S. Korea is much stronger than other countries; regulator won’t let S. Korea take the lead in abnormal cryptocurrency trading.

Coin Market Cap also unexpectantly removed three Korean exchanges from their averages "due to the extreme divergence in prices from the rest of the world and limited arbitrage opportunity."

"This morning we excluded some Korean exchanges in price calculations due to the extreme divergence in prices from the rest of the world and limited arbitrage opportunity. We are working on better tools to provide users with the averages that are most relevant to them." Coin Market Cap, the go-to website for crypto data, tweeted Monday.

Coin Desk reports:

The unannounced move to remove data from Bithumb, Coinone and Korbit from its average calculations sparked confusion given that its front-page suggests a broad decline in the cryptocurrency market, including what appeared to be a near-30% fall in the price of XRP.

The overall market cap of the market – one measure by which traders assess the ecosystem – dropped sharply once the change went into effect, which appears to have taken place just before 5 a.m. UTC.

The exact reason for pulling the data isn't clear at this time, though as of press time Bithumb is offline because of what the exchange says is a server check. And prices on those exchanges have consistently traded far above the rest of the market, such as the more than $5,000 spread compared to markets like Bitfinex and GDAX.

According to Ripple chief cryptographer David Schwartz, the exclusion of the Korean exchanges will be "more accurate and meaningful."

So, after dipping below 700 billion, the crypto market cap has bounced back up to $742,251,781,226.