Cryptocurrency values fall and exchange trading stalls, as glitches emerge

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On Tuesday, the price of cryptocurrencies plummeted and crypto trading was halted, as El Salvador faced difficulties as the first government to embrace bitcoin as legal cash. Shares of blockchain-related companies declined as well, as crypto stocks were impacted by trading platform outages. The main focus, however, was on El Salvador, where the government was forced to temporarily unplug a digital wallet to meet demand.

Bitcoin, the world’s largest and most well-known cryptocurrency, fell more than 17% to $43,000 before recovering some of its losses to trade down 9.20 percent at $47,140.27. Earlier in the session, bitcoin reached a high of $52,948.00. Ethereum, the token linked to the ethereum blockchain network, plunged 11.99 percent.

Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) Global Inc and Kraken, two major cryptocurrency exchanges, have both reported delays in some transactions on their platforms. Coinbase said some transactions were delayed or canceled at “elevated rates” and that “our apps may be experiencing errors.” The exchange later said issues with Coinbase card swipes were resolved and that transactions were going through normally.

The Gemini exchange said that it had entered a full-maintenance period to fix an exchange-related issue that was causing performance issues. The value of Coinbase’s stock has dropped by 4.02 percent. Anything having to do with cryptocurrencies appeared to be in jeopardy. Riot Block chain (NASDAQ: RIOT) and Marathon Digital Holdings (NASDAQ: MDH) are two cryptocurrency miners that have fallen 7.38 percent and 7.76 percent, respectively. Micro Strategy Inc, a Bitcoin buyer and business intelligence software company, saw its stock drop 7.64 percent.