India and Ireland spooked crypto market, sending coins into tailspin, Bitcoin shed 5% in a matter of hours

• Zebpay scared cryptocurrency traders with the reminder of upcoming ban.
• Ireland Bitcoin broker accuses officials of  discrimination.

Cryptocurrency market is an unpredictable beast. South Korean Bithumb, the sixth largest exchange in the world, gets hacked and traders just yawn in response, Indian  Zebpay announces that banks are about to cut them off from banking services, and everyone starts selling cryptos like crazy.

Zebpay’s announcement was hardly surprising as the  Reserve Bank of India issued the corresponding directive back in April, ordering banks to stop dealing with digital assets and companies operating in the crypto universe. However, the market reaction was fierce: Bitcoin and Ethereum experience flash crash on Indian exchange and resumed the sell-off during Asian hours on Friday, when the news hit the broader market.  

Another reason behind the sharp negative reaction came from Ireland. where a Bitcoin broker Eircoin  accused  Banking and Payments Federation of  Ireland  of discriminating against the accounts of crypto-related companies.  Eircoin’s co-founder  Dave Fleming claims that the company was closed “due to a negligent and defensive banking system” on false and ungrounded accusations of illegal activities.  

As negative news is piling up with little positive developments to mitigate the consequences, all major cryptocurrencies are falling down fiercely, with the sell-off intensified by technical factors. BTC/USD smashed local support at $6,600 and proceeded to $6,400, which was also broken with current intraday low at $6,347.

ETH/USD lost over 6% since the beginning of the day, now trading below critical $500. EOS/USD is an obvious worst-performer as the coin lost 10% to trade at $9.29 at the time of writing.