Crypto
crypto

Bitcoin sinks, taking Strategy and others with it

Bitcoin’s started the week over $87,000, but is ending the week down, with the price dropping roughly 3% today to about $84,000. This seems to be dragging down bitcoin-holding company Strategy, which is down over 6% as of 11:45 a.m. ET. Earlier this week, Strategy CEO Michael Saylor announced that the company now holds more than half a million bitcoin (506,137 bitcoin to be precise), or 2.4% of the total bitcoin supply.

US crypto exchange Coinbase and retail trading app Robinhood are also slumping as the broader crypto market flashes red, with ethereum and XRP dropping over 5%. 

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company.)

There were hopes that the price of bitcoin could reach new highs this week, after GameStop announced a bitcoin reserve. These hopes didn’t last long, as GameStop crashed after it announced a $1.3 billion private offering of convertible senior notes, which traders absolutely hated.

Trump Media & Technology Group’s announcement that it had partnered with Crypto.com to launch several crypto ETFs via the Truth.Fi fintech brand didn’t push bitcoin or overall crypto prices higher, either.

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Altcoin trading activity has lost its mojo

Non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies have seen their trading volume plummet in the past five months. The combined trading volume of ethereum, XRP, solana, dogecoin, SUI, and chainlink has decreased by 60% since crypto’s October 10 liquidation event, according to Thomas Probst, a research analyst at crypto markets data provider Kaiko.

Main Altcoins Trading Volume in USD
The trading volume of ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE, SUI, and LINK.

For all altcoins, spot trading volume on Binance has declined between 80% and 85% to $7.7 billion, while altcoin volume on other exchanges has dropped to $18.8 billion, down from a range of $63 billion to $91 billion in October, a Friday report from Decrypt found, citing data from CryptoQuant.

“This trend may be explained by a contraction in market liquidity over the same period,” Probst told Sherwood News. “This phenomenon is also reflected in the average 1% market depth, which stood at approximately $2.6 million before the October 10 crash and is now closer to $1.7 million when aggregated across ETH, XRP, SOL, SUI, and LINK.” 

Market depth is used by investors and traders to gauge the scale of liquidity in a market. 1% market depth refers to the amount of liquidity needed to move the market by 1%. 

CoinGlass’s Altcoin Season Index, a measure to assess the performance of non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies, has been sitting above 50 this week, suggesting that the current market is neither in a bitcoin dominant phase nor an altcoin season.

Witch

“Triple witching” day may put further pressure on bitcoin’s price

This is not “a favorable environment for risk assets.”

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Payward, parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, puts plans for IPO on hold

Payward, crypto exchange Kraken’s parent company, has paused its plans for an initial public offering until market conditions improve, according to a report from CoinDesk that cited two people with knowledge of the matter. 

Since the firm announced in November its preparation for an IPO of its common stock, the total market capitalization of the crypto industry has shed around $652.2 billion, from $3.2 trillion to $2.5 trillion as of Wednesday, data from CoinGecko shows. 

The news comes two weeks after Kraken received approval for a master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, allowing the crypto exchange to connect to the Fed’s payment infrastructure used by traditional banks and credit unions. 

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

The news comes two weeks after Kraken received approval for a master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, allowing the crypto exchange to connect to the Fed’s payment infrastructure used by traditional banks and credit unions. 

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

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