It was a turbulent week for cryptocurrencies.
Despite Bitcoin's several attempts to hold firm ground on the $7,000 price mark, the leading digital currency fell below $6,500 in just 24 hours.
This price has not been seen since mid-July when the coin slowly started to grow in value.
Moreover, Bitcoin's downfall caused the market to lose an additional $40 billion, prompting the total market capitalization to go from a solid price of $300 billion just two weeks ago, to something over $220 billion to press time.
For other leading cryptocurrencies, this past week has been a real rollercoaster as well. After managing to stay in the green for some time, the Bitcoin price fall eventually had an impact on them.
Currently, coins including Ethereum, Ripple, EOS and Bitcoin Cash have all noticed a staggering price drop that goes up to 16 percent, and for some even more.
The second best digital asset on the market, Ethereum (ETH), went from over $420 last week to a current price of around $360, and Ripple (XRP) went down in price around 11 percent.
In other news, Fundstrat Global Advisors Managing Partner Tom Lee is still optimistic about Bitcoin.
Despite its bad performance in the last couple of days, the Wall Street bull told CNBC's "Fast Money" that he is confident this coin is not "broken" and will have a big return.
This statement comes after Intercontinental Exchange's announcement about launching a new digital assets trading platform.
Monero Glitch Allowed Hackers to Easily Steal XMR
Monero has been struggling to keep its position on the market as a secure cryptocurrency, especially after last week's events when a glitch allowed hackers to steal XMR directly from the wallets of exchange desks.
Although Monero addressed the problem, assuring that it has been fixed, this is still bugging XMR holders and investors.
At the beginning of August, as reported, more than 200,000 routers were hacked using a malware that allowed miners to secretly mine XMR.
This cryptocurrency is often a target of cyberattacks. Nevertheless, they are constantly working on upgrading their security features-the main thing that differentiates Monero from other cryptocurrencies.
The decentralized digital asset owes its success mostly to their untraceable, private transactions, so losing this quality will definitely have a negative effect.
Criminal Activity in Cryptocurrency Dropped from 90 to Only 10 Percent
In an interview with Bloomberg, Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Lilita Infante said that in the last five years the percentage of criminal activity in cryptocurrency has decreased tremendously.
On the other hand, the volume, the amount of transaction and the dollar value have all grown tremendously. Now, illicit activities have been replaced by Bitcoin price speculations.
According to Infante's analysis, back in 2013 criminal activity was behind roughly 90 percent of transactions in cryptocurrencies.
The illicit activities have fallen to around 10 percent now, as the number of transactions keeps growing.
Besides a DEA special agent, Infante is also a part of the Cyber Investigative Task Force team that focuses on dark web and cryptocurrency cases.
Her findings show that, despite popular belief, Bitcoin and other digital assets are not used only by criminals on the dark web.
However, the dark web remains a place where illicit activities are often conducted with digital currencies, as it has been for years now.
As Infante further states, in these past few years, there is a growing trend of criminal organizations that increasingly use these decentralized coins for their illicit operations.
Dark Web Listing for Bitcoin ATM Malware Being Sold for $25,000
A crypto ATM malware that lets you obtain Bitcoins valued at 6,750 USD, British Pounds or Euros has been found on the dark web by Japanese cybersecurity company Trend Micro.
The listing offered a ready-to-use card equipped with EMV and NFC capabilities as well as a multilingual guide and claimed that buyers could use it to exploit a "service vulnerability" that lets them obtain these Bitcoins.
The malware is being sold for a price of $25,000 and was listed on the dark market earlier this summer.
Regular ATMs are often targeted by cybercriminals, however, with the rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, new types of ATMs entered the game.
Just last year, their number was much lower. According to this year's statistics, currently, around 3,500 cryptocurrency ATMs are being used around the world.
That's it for our summary of this week's major crypto news headlines. This is the sixth post in our new crypto news series. See previous installments of our weekly crypto market series:
