Ether slips below $2K for the second time in a week

Ethereum (ETH) and most major altcoins declined sharply on Sunday, extending a ten-day selloff that has knocked out more than $1 trillion in combined valuation from the market. 

Ether price dipped below $2,000 for only the second time since Apr. 7, reaching an intraday low of $1,870.00, according to TradingView data. Ether fell below the psychological threshold last week as Bitcoin (BTC) briefly dipped below $30,000. The second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was last seen languishing at $1,936, down nearly 16% on the day.

The fall from grace puts Ether at a 54% discount compared with its all-time high near $4,200 earlier this month.

Bitcoin continues to exert a gravitational pull on the broader cryptocurrency market. A coordinated selloff of BTC over the past week has put a damper on market sentiment, dragging the Crypto Fear & Greed Index to “Extreme Fear.” As Cointelegraph recently reported, Bitcoin’s price fell below $34,000 on Sunday.

Some analysts foresaw ETH’s large decline after a massive inflow of the digital currency made its way onto exchanges, signaling that whales were preparing to sell.

Looking beyond the charts, the Ethereum Foundation recently disclosed that it had fixed a “severe threat” against the smart contract platform after implementing the Berlin hard fork last month. The threat left the Ethereum network highly vulnerable to “malicious transactions,” Martin Holst Swende and Peter Szilagyi wrote on May 18. After the issue was fixed, the Foundation disclosed the vulnerability “in the interest of transparency.”

Market optimism surrounding Ethereum has been high for much of 2021, as investors and users look ahead to the highly anticipated EIP-1559 upgrade. The proposed upgrade, which will be part of the London hard fork slated for July, intends to change Ethereum’s fee structure and remove much of the uncertainty around gas costs.