A dramatic meltdown in bitcoin and other cryptocurrency appears to have slowed, with investors left counting their losses after one of the most dramatic plunges in recent times.
The entire market is still significantly down over the last week. Ethereum, for instance, has been particularly hard hit and lost 24 percent of its value in the last seven days.
There are signs that dramatic fall could turn around, however. Bitcoin is up 14 percent over the last day–and back through the important psychological milestone of $30,000—and the market is up 13.5 per cent.
Fear shook the market this week after the Terra (LUNA) cryptocurrency fell by over 99 percent overnight, and the wider crash has pushed another stable coin, Tether, below its dollar peg.
You can follow all the latest news, analysis and expert price predictions for bitcoin, as well as other leading cryptocurrencies like Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA), right here.
Key points
Bitcoin price crash caused by ‘wider adversity'
Bitcoin market enters ‘extreme fear'
Crypto market metrics ‘incredibly bullish’ despite price crash
Terra Luna cryptocurrency collapses 98% overnight
Terra Luna misses out
08:02 , Andrew Griffin
The crypto market might attempt to recover this morning. But that doesn’t apply to Terra Luna, the so-called stable coin that was at the centre of the meltdown.
That’s supposed to be pegged to the dollar, so that it is always worth $1. This morning, it is worth $0.00005583.
And also, it’s not really moving from that price—in part because the instability means that the technology underpinning it has been broken, and exchanges have stopped allowing it to be traded.
Sublacunose: What are Terra and Tether, and how did they help cause new crypto meltdown?
07:50 , Jon Sharman
So-called stable coins have led the cryptocurrency market to melt down in a moment of significant instability, writes Andrew Griffin.
The cryptocurrencies are a reliable way of investing in digital money, and are marketed as being a way around the significant volatility in other, better known names such as bitcoin.
For some, that volatility is a fun or valuable thing about cryptocurrencies, as people look to make money by trading them. But it is also means that they are a dangerous store of value, and are impractical to use in actual transactions.
The country became the first to make it legal tender last September, and the government spent around $105m on Bitcoin, before the 40 per cent fall in its value, reports the news organisation.
“Because custodial held crypto assets may be considered being the property of a bankruptcy estate, in the event of a bankruptcy, the crypto assets we hold in custody on behalf of our customers could be subject to bankruptcy proceedings and such customers could be treated as our general unsecured creditors”, the warning states.