Ethereum was outpacing Bitcoin in decline in Friday’s early deals, falling 5.6% whilst BTC gave up another 1.7% to trade at US$42,375.
It so far has been a detrimental start to 2022, fuelled in recent days by the latest Chinese regulations which effectively made digital currencies illegal to trade in the People’s Republic.
Sentiments were also soured by Elon Musk’s decision earlier this week for Tesla to stop accepting Bitcoin as payment due to the high energy usage required in mining.
More heat appears to have come out of Ethereum, which at US$3,245 this morning is now some 33% below the all-time high set in November.
Meanwhile, other notable fallers within the top 20 include Binance Coin, Solana, Terra, Avalanche, and Crypto.com, which have shed 3.3%, 6.4%, 5.7%, 4.4%, and 3.1% in value respectively.
Among the meme coins, Dogecoin sunk 0.5% to US$0.156, while its closest rival Shiba Inu dropped 0.6% to 0.0000297.
Elsewhere, it wasn’t total doom and gloom.
HEX, XRP, and Cardano (ADA) have put their front foot forward – up 2.8%, 1.6%, and 1.5% respectively, to be the only risers in the top 10 cryptos.
Elsewhere the trio of Cosmos, Decentraland, and Harmony were the most notable to buck the trend among the top 50 cryptos, advancing 15.5%, 12.5%, and 11.5% respectively.