Long story:
Crypto / BTC prices have fallen from their December rates due to:
1 - Bitconnect pyramid collapsed;
2 - Japanese exchange Coincheck was hacked few days ago, for a total of 530 million USD missing;
3 - Tether (USDT) token appears to be a pyramid that “printed” (or should I say, minted) a few hundred millions Tethers to cause a surge in the need more Bitcoin to be bought (because Tether needs to have a constant price of 1 USD, 1 USDT = 1 USD) and more Tether to be bought with these Bitcoins. In the end this leads to Bitcoin price increase. It is said that the exchange Bitfinex is behind all of this. Bitfinex created USDT (Tether).
EDIT 31st of January: 4 - According to an article from this morning on The Telegraph, Coincheck hackers are moving the stolen coins to the exchanges and are trying to sell them:
Coincheck hackers trying to move stolen cryptocurrency after major Japanese heist
I highly suggest you to read the Medium articles on the Tether topic by the guy who brought the whole scheme to light.
great comment, thanks @maestrobarn, I'll check out those Medium posts!
regarding Bitconnect and Coincheck, yes I agree these are the two big 'FUD' (with good reason may I add) events that surely is responsible for a lot of 'buyers remorse' that we see new buyers selling early.
Dwarfing both of these, the Elephant in every crypto-traders front room is the conclusion-less story of Tether which is still trading massive volumes despite apparently legitimate long-term liquidity concerns. Am I reading the situation correctly in that thats what you are somewhat saying?
If it is, I agree.. and I don't think we've seen the end of the Bitcoin/cryptocurrency story