The attack on cryptocurrencies by centralized financial institutions in the name of “protecting investors from volatility” continues. Last week one of Canada’s largest banks blocked cryptocurrency purchases, a move that followed similar bans in the United States by large banks like JP Morgan. The Reserve Bank of India has issued a blanket ban on all cryptocurrency trading:

You will not be able to buy cryptocurrency via banks or e-wallets etc. in India anymore as Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has banned them with immediate effect from “dealing with or providing services to any individuals or business entities dealing with or settling virtual currencies”.

Whether it was the moves by Central Banks or that is just the excuse, a quick glance at these charts reveals the current  state of the Crypto market – R. Zurrer for Money Talks

New Weekly Update: The Three Largest Cryptocurrencies

With all the focus on bitcoin lately, we’ve added a new weekly update that tracks the three largest cryptocurrencies by market share: bitcoin, Ether, and Ripple. According to Wikipedia, a cryptocurrency is “a digital asset designed to work as a medium of exchange that uses cryptography to secure its transactions, to control the creation of additional units, and to verify the transfer of assets.”

Bitcoin is the world’s first cryptocurrency and decentralized digital currency. The first bitcoin transaction occurred in early 2009 and has since grown worldwide. Ether is another cryptocurrency run on the Ethereum blockchain platform and has the second largest market share, despite being the newest of the three with its launch in July 2015. The third largest market share of cryptocurrency, XRP, is owned by Ripple and launched in 2012.

Here are all three cryptocurrency prices over time along with their trading volume. Data for all three is sourced from Coinbase.com and by request, we have shortened the time frame for a more recent picture.

We have also created an index in order to chart these together given their very different pricing history. Notice that Ether tops the chart – the price of an ether has changed the most out of all three cryptocurrencies.

….also from Jill: 

The Four Totally Bad Bear Recoveries: Where Is Today’s Market?