Rumors about the death of Ethereum’s founder resulted in a cryptocurrency-wide market crash, with Dash bouncing back a little quicker.

A fake news story was circulated that Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s founder, had tragically passed away in an automobile accident. To dispel this rumor, Buterin posted a selfie with handwritten information from a recent Ethereum block:

However, by that time the damage had been done. The Ethereum price crashed from about $330 on Sunday to a low of $240 on Monday, erasing $8 billion in market cap in barely a day.

Domino effect on the crypto markets

Ethereum’s crash resulted in a panic sell-off, which filtered through to the rest of the market. While many Ethereum trading pairs exist for traders to liquidate directly into fiat currency, many nonetheless exited by selling for Bitcoin, then selling that for their local currency, as Charlie Shrem pointed out with some exasperation:

The domino effect crashed both Bitcoin and Ethereum’s prices, which constituted 2/3 of the market, resulting in a collapse across the whole field. That caused the entire cryptocurrency market to sink from $110 billion to $91 billion.

Dash’s losses not quite as bad as others

While Dash also took heavy losses, dropping from $182 on Sunday to a low of $150 on Monday (currently valued around $162), its recovery has been faster than many of its peers. At time of writing, the 24-hour chart shows the top 11 cryptocurrencies with a loss of above 7% except for Bitcoin, which went down 4.75%. Dash only registers a 1.47% 24-hour loss, recovering from today’s second dip much quicker. Dash has gained 2.76% against Bitcoin, and 13.6% against Ethereum. This upset has allowed it to inch ever closer to its closest chart rival, NEM, going up to 88% of its market cap.