Bitcoin (BTC) fell again this Wednesday and reached $16,500 per unit, its lowest value since November 2020. There was a general crash in the crypto market that speculates on the final bankruptcy of FTX, one of the three largest industry exchange platforms.
The announcement by Binance – the number one exchange platform in the market – that it would buy the company and its possible retraction in just 24 hours brought enormous turmoil and fear to the market, which reacted with strong selling pressure.
As a result of these events, BTC has accumulated a drop of almost 18% since this Tuesday, when the run against the funds deposited in FTX began, while other cryptocurrencies in the top 10 of the market suffered even more abrupt falls.
The cryptocurrency market crashes
Ether (ETH), the second largest market cap, was trading at $1,150 per unit, down 25% since Tuesday morning, while other top 10 cryptos like XRP, Cardano (ADA) , Polygon (MATIC) and Polcadot (DOT) showed declines of between 15 and 35% in the last two days, according to data from the CoinMarketCap portal.
The most acute case is that of FTT, the FTX exchange token, which this afternoon was selling at US$3.50 per unit, 85% below the US$22 at which it was offered on Tuesday morning, then that its founder announced the sale of the company to its main competitor, Binance, in the midst of a “liquidity crisis”.
Cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin fell 18% in two days and Ethereum, 25%
Among the most affected by this event is the cryptocurrency Solana (SOL), which on Wednesday afternoon was trading at US$15, a drop of 50% in the last 36 hours and 95% compared to the maximum of US$260 that had reached exactly a year ago.
Solana had been heavily supported by Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX, to help it gain traction and visibility, to the point where it is the second-largest holding of Alameda Research, a Bankman-Fried-founded trading shop, accounting for roughly 10% of Solana’s market capitalization.