Investing.com - Bitcoin's dominance of the cryptocurrency market fell to its lowest ever level on Wednesday amid growing interest in alternative digital currencies.
On Wednesday, bitcoin’s market capitalization was $232 billion, around 33.7% of the total value of all cryptocurrencies, its lowest ever market share. At the start of 2017, its market share stood at over 80%.
The digital currency had risen around twentyfold since the start of 2017, climbing from less than $1,000 to as high as $19,891 on 17 December on Bitfinex and to more than $20,000 on other exchanges.
However, it has posted heavy declines since, falling as low as $10,718 on December 22, before recovering.
Bitcoin was trading at $13,704.00 by 10:02 AM ET (15:02 GMT) on the Bitfinex exchange after falling around 7% over the past week.
Meanwhile, Ripple's XRP token was trading at $1.82 on the Poloinex exchange after falling as low as $1.61 earlier. Prices had fallen around 15% on Tuesday.
Ethereum hit an all-time high of $1,381.90 on the Bitfinex exchange before pulling back to trade at $1,322.80.
That pushed Ripple’s market capitalization down to $72 billion and raised Ethereum’s value to $127 billion.
On Monday, Ethereum regained the title of second most valuable cryptocurrency after being temporarily knocked into third place by Ripple's XRP token last week.
Digital currencies have sold off since website CoinMarketCap on Monday unexpectedly moved to exclude prices from South Korean exchanges from its calculations of digital currency rates.
Prices were also hit by news that South Korean financial authorities were inspecting six local banks that offer virtual currency accounts to institutions.
A report that the Chinese government is considering further action to stamp out cryptocurrency mining also fueled the selloff.
The rally in Ethereum was supported by recent comments from its co-creator Steven Nerayoff who said in an interview with CNBC on Monday that its protocol could lead to mass adoption for a wide variety of blockchain applications.
"What you're seeing with Ethereum is exponential increase in the number of projects — there are billions of dollars being poured into the ecosystem right now — maybe 10 times more projects this year than last year, which could easily lead to a doubling, probably a tripling in price by the end of the year," he said.