The price of ether, the native cryptocurrency powering the ethereum blockchain, fell below $200 today for the first time since 30th May.

During the day's session, the price of one ether token hit an inter-day low of $192.22 across major exchanges, its lowest value in over 40 days of trading, according to data from cryptocurrency price information provider Coinmarketcap.

At press time, the value had recovered to $198, but the fall to $192 still marked a more than 50% drop from all-time highs above $400 observed in early June, a time when excitement over initial coin offerings (ICOs) and new mainstream attention were perhaps driving new users more aggressively to the platform.

Even with the declines, though, the price of ether is still up substantially over the course of 2017, having risen over 2,000% from roughly $8 on 1st January. Further, while it has yet to surpass bitcoin's total value, as some had predicted, there is still broad optimism about the asset among traders, who believe it to be a rare cryptocurrency that has established a viable value proposition by enabling token issuance.

Nonetheless, the decline in ether's price, which at press time was down nearly 17% on the day, has so far coincided with a broader sell-off in the global cryptocurrency markets.

At time of writing, the total value of the token supplies for all publicly traded cryptocurrencies was just above $80bn, a figure that is down from over $100bn last week, and that also represented the lowest total observed since late May.

Among the top 10 cryptocurrencies, most saw steep declines, with ripple, ethereum classic, dash, IOTA and NEM falling over 16%.

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