Bitcoin, Ether Bulls Fail to Break Out of Rut Caused by FTX’s Collapse

After a poor start to the week, Bitcoin appears to be trying to push on towards the end of the week as crypto investors expect more firms to blow up in the treacherous wreckage of FTX’s collapse. As things stand, Bitcoin hasn’t quite begun a bull run, but is closer to the psychologically important $17,000 (roughly Rs. 13.8 lakh) level than earlier in the week. BTC is up by close to 2 percent in the last 24 hours with its price now around the $16,900 (roughly Rs. 13.71 lakh) mark across global exchanges, while Indian exchanges like CoinDCX value BTC at $18,046 (roughly Rs. 14.65 lakh), which is 0.76 percent higher than what the crypto asset was valued at on early Thursday.

On global exchanges like CoinMarketCap, Coinbase, and Binance the price of Bitcoin stands at $16,914 (roughly Rs. 13.73 lakh) while CoinGecko data shows that BTC’s value now sits 4.4 percent lower than where it stood last Friday.

Ether, the largest smart contracts token, saw a bit of an uptick in value too, but continues to be stuck in a bit of a rut where a bullish run over the next few days seem rather unlikely. Ether is currently up by roughly 1.02 percent over the past 24 hours across global exchanges. Meanwhile, on Indian exchanges, ETH is valued at $1,320 (roughly Rs. 1.07 lakh) where values are surprisingly down by 0.14 percent in the past day.

Gadgets 360’s cryptocurrency price tracker reveals that most major altcoins saw a jump in value too with the global crypto market capitalisation numbers showing a 1.01 percent increase over the last day.

Polygon, BNB, Cosmos, Chainlink, and Polkadot, TRON, Avalanche, and Monero all stay in the green while Cardano, Uniswap, and Solana marked minor losses over the past 24 hours.

Dogecoin and Shiba Inu managed to show up on the green scale too. Dogecoin is currently valued at $0.08 (roughly Rs. 7.13) after gaining by more than 0.6 percent in value over the last 24 hours, while, Shiba Inu is valued at $0.0000092 (roughly Rs. 0.000749), up 0.45 percent over the past day.

“Last week witnessed the collapse of one of crypto’s most recognised brands FTX, resulting in a massive overhang on the entire industry and impacted investor confidence. As FTX and Alameda declared bankruptcy, legacy investors like Sequoia, Temasek and even Pension funds got burnt, while an expected 1 million creditors are staring at a long-drawn court battle. The contagion risk has only started emerging as the biggest lending desk in crypto, Genesis, halted credit withdrawals and loan origination. Further revelations may happen, with Gemini stopping its “Earn” program that was powered by Genesis in the background,” said Parth Chaturvedi, Crypto Ecosystem Lead, CoinSwitch, rounding off the week for Gadgets 360.

“Several regulatory bodies across jurisdictions have begun investigations on SBF and his aides, with the expectation that this episode will hasten global coordination in developing a more robust regulatory framework for crypto assets and related entities. Till these guardrails are established, institutional capital is expected to wait on the sidelines,” added Chaturvedi.

He goes on to state that the silver lining to this collapse was that the global macro backdrop improved last week, with monthly US Inflation numbers surprisingly being lower at 7.7 percent and an immediate relief rally across ‘risk-on’ assets that sustained over the week.

“Broader crypto markets have traded in a narrow range, after the massive ~20 percent correction in the week before, settling at market capitalisation well below $900 billion (roughly Rs. 73,06,315 crore). BTC continues to struggle around $16,900 (roughly Rs. 13.71 lakh), while ETH is trading around $1,200 (roughly Rs. 97,417). The biggest losers have been FTX’s exchange token FTT (falling another 75 percent and trading below $2 or Rs. 162) and Alameda backed SOL, which now has a market capitalisation of under $5 billion (roughly Rs. 40,590 crore) and is behind SHIB in token listings,” remarked Chaturvedi.

“As a reflection of global sentiments in India, CRE8, an Indian Rupee denominated Virtual Digital Asset (crypto) index was down 9.29 percent in the past 7 days. The Index value stood at Rs. 2,411 at 8 am on November 18. BTC and ETH continue to be the top assets by market capitalisation.”

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