Here’s another dip-buying opportunity for you, folks.

Cryptocurrency markets are in a sea of red this afternoon, with Bitcoin unusually falling more than Ethereum and major altcoins like Cardano (ADA).

At 2.55pm AEDT, BTC was trading at $US54,239 ($70,000), down 10.1 per cent in the past 24 hours (but up slightly from lunchtime, when reached a 24-hour low of $US53,478).

Ethereum was changing hands at $US1,750 ($2,280), down 7.1 per cent, while Cardano was down just 3.4 per cent to $US1.02.

Twenty-three of the top 100 coins on Coingecko had gained ground over the past 24 hours, while 77 were in the red.

Crypto market
Coin360

Holo (Hot) was the worst performer, down 20.2 per cent to US0.6c after setting an all-time high yesterday, while Orbs was the best, up 45.4 per cent to US28.2c. After being pretty quiet for most of the recent bull run, Orbs tokens have mooned in the past week, with a more than eightfold (!) gain.

An Israeli-based Ethereum scaling solution, Orbs raised $US118 million in a May 2018 initial coin offering at US10c each, but has only traded at that level in recent days.

The 97th coin by market capitalisation, Orbs hit an all-time high of US29c around 2pm. The other top 100 coins hitting all-time highs in the last 24 hours are Nexo, Terra (Luna), Holo, Enjin Coin, VeChain and FTX Token, according to Coingecko.

A whale dump?

The Bitcoin pullback accelerated after someone transferred 18,961 Bitcoin — worth $US1.1 billion ($1.4 billion) — to the Gemini exchange, the New York-based Bitcoin exchange run by twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, made famous in The Social Network.

Because Bitcoin operates on a blockchain, transactions are pseudo-anonymous but public, and large transfers are tracked. While one tracking firm claimed this one an internal transfer, another said it was from an outside user.

Traders generally see large Bitcoin transfers to exchanges as a bearish signal, indicating that a “whale” or large BTC holder, is about to sell off their digital assets.

Still, Crypto Twitter seemed optimistic this would be a fairly brief dip.