- Bitcoin and ethereum both fell double digits on Wednesday before a recovery in a dark day for the crypto world.
- Crypto-linked stocks like Coinbase, Riot Blockchain, MicroStrategy, and more all fell in response.
- The start of the bear market for crypto came after Elon Musk said Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin on May 12.
- Sign up here for our daily newsletter, 10 Things Before the Opening Bell.
Cryptocurrency linked-stocks plummeted on Wednesday amid massive sell-offs in crypto leaders bitcoin and ethereum.
Shares of the cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, fell as much as 10%, while shares of cryptocurrency miners like Riot Blockchain and Marathon Digital Holdings were down as much as 17% and 18%, respectively.
Michael Saylor's Microstrategy, which just "bought the dip" in bitcoin with $10 million at an average price of $43,663 per coin, was down as much as 15% on the day.
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust sank more than 6% on Wednesday as well, and even Tesla saw its stock drop more than 3% on the dark day for cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
Cryptocurrencies as a whole saw roughly 15% wiped off their total market cap on the day, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com, as altcoins fell in tandem with crypto leaders bitcoin and ethereum.
All of the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap, except the stablecoins, fell double digits on Wednesday.
The cryptocurrency bear market began on May 12, when Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin as a payment method due to the environmental impact of its computational mining tactic for minting new coins.
Then on Tuesday, the Chinese government reinforced its previous ban on financial institutions and payments companies operating in the cryptocurrency business.
The National Internet Finance Association of China, the China Banking Association, and the Payment and Clearing Association of China said in a statement that cryptocurrencies "are not supported by real value" and argued speculative trading of cryptocurrencies is "seriously infringing on the safety of people's property and disrupting the normal economic and financial order."
The historic single-day fall for cryptocurrencies comes just a day after Galaxy Digital's Mike Novogratz shrugged off the recent crypto-slump.
"It's easy to get buried in the volatility of the day," Novogratz said, according to a transcript on Sentieo, a financial-research site. "Elon Musk's Twitter comments, bitcoin going down 4,000 points, and everyone starts running around like chickens with their head cut off."
Novogratz said he expects the total value of crypto assets to triple, or even quadruple, to between $6 trillion and $8 trillion in the coming years.
