Investing is always a risk but investing in cryptocurrency is an even higher risk as they are VERY volatile.
In the wake of both Coincheck’s hack–as well as a big one that hit the South Korean exchange Coinrail–governments in East Asia began to crack down. Over the course of a few months, China, Japan, and South Korea all announced different measures to better regulate crypto-trading. The world was watching to see if this new technology would hit the mainstream–and government crackdowns following gigantic hacks helped poison the public perception.

But to understand the dynamic that led to this year’s depressing year for crypto, we actually should start a few years before 2018. In bitcoin’s early days, Mt. Gox was the go-to service for handling transactions. Then, in 2014, it halted transactions and slowly copped to a crypto-hack to the tune of $473 million, the biggest hack of its kind at the time, and it gave many people pause. But it was still early enough for people to believe that the blockchain system was still getting all the technical kinks out.
Even though the current downside move is sure to shock some investors, slight corrections after reaching new all-time highs are a customary practice for Bitcoin.