The prices of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies went into near-freefall as online exchanges such as Coinbase and Binance weathered outages and halted trades, following a mass sell-off in the sector.
Bitcoin fell as much as 30% in afternoon trading on 19 May, while ether dropped similarly, wiping billions of dollars off their market capitalisations. Smaller coins also fared negatively, with bitcoin cash, stellar, EOS and litecoin all dropping more than 40% by 2pm BST.