The crypto carnage carries on as nervous investors rush for the exits and huge digital-asset-focused firms Celsius and Three Arrows Capital (3AC) feel the heat.

Crypto-lending giant Celsius was already sitting in a stagnating pool of its own sweat, and it’s now come to light that 3AC appears to be in hot financial water, too.

At the moment, the entire crypto market cap is languishing below a trill at US$917 billion, with Bitcoin (BTC) inching ever closer to US$20k and Ethereum (ETH) threatening to dip to three figures. More than US$400 billion has been wiped from the space since this time a week ago.

If dry-powder-stacking opportunists were waiting for bloody streets, they’ve got them, although the horror show could be about to get worse…

 

3AC liquidation woes

Three Arrows Capital, the huge Dubai and Singapore-based crypto-focused venture capital firm, is staring down the barrel of possible insolvency after it suffered more than US$400 million in liquidations, The Block reported today.

At its peak, 3AC was estimated (by blockchain analytics firm Nansen) to have owned about US$10 billion in assets, controlling more than 5 per cent of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.

Overshadowed by the Celsius platform’s own dramas, Twitter chatter has been swirling this week regarding 3AC’s asset movements to various DeFi platforms such as Aave, in a possible attempt to avoid liquidations. The rumour is the firm has been unable to meet a margin call.

On-chain data suggests that 3AC has been selling assets in bulk to lower collateral requirements for certain positions. According to CoinDesk, one of 3AC’s wallets has a debt totalling more than US$183 million.

After remaining unusually silent earlier this week, 3AC’s founder, the normally highly Twitter-vocal Su Zhu, has now addressed the social media throng with this short, unsatisfying statement:

Suspicions of 3AC’s trouble apparently intensified a few days ago when Zhu removed from his Twitter bio all mention of various investments including Ethereum (ETH), Avalanche (AVAX), Terra (LUNA), Solana (SOL) and others – keeping only Bitcoin (BTC). The VC founder also recently deleted his Instagram account.

There’s mounting speculation that 3AC’s potential woes could all be one big soupy mess of overexposure to Celsius, the crashed Terra ecosystem, Staked Ether (stETH) and other over-leveraged investments.

 

Exchanges flood with Bitcoin inflows

Bitcoin is currently changing paper hands for about US$20.5k – the lowest it’s been since December 2020, and moving closer to the previous bull market (2018) peak of just under $20k. It’s now down about 34% on the week and the month, and 70% away from the heady, meme-ish days of US$69k.

As the leading crypto and overall market health barometer, the fears are that the BTC sell-off is set to get a fair bit worse before things get better, despite some calling for a bottom at pretty much this level.

Those fears are being compounded by the amount of inflows of BTC to major exchanges this week – spiking to near three-and-a-half-year highs.

As Cointelegraph reported earlier today, data from on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant shows that users of 21 major exchanges sent Bitcoin to their wallets in bulk on June 14, with 59,356 of BTC moving into the guest room and making themselves at home.

It’s the largest daily inflow of BTC to exchanges since November 30, 2018.

As for the actual selling, crypto exchanges FTX and Binance have been host to most of that pressure, according to CryptoQuant CEO Ki-Young Ju.

 

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