The endless Bitcoin-price tug-of-war has pulled a bit more towards the bears with news that the “crypto-friendly” bank Silvergate is indeed winding down operations with an announcement of voluntary liquidation.

The, uh, silver lining there, however, is that this news is probably largely “priced in” to the market already.

In other words, unlike initial reports of SBF and the FTX lot co-mingling funds while having polycule-sex pool parties and hiding a debt hole of about US$9b, this Silvergate announcement isn’t exactly a shocker to most people following the crypto news and market.

That said, it’s still not insignificant for the crypto space that Silvergate bank is effectively rolling over. It’s been a major banking partner for the industry in the US for some time and there perhaps remains some underlying systemic risk of further crypto-firm-contagion-calamity as a result.

Silvergate Capital has cited regulatory headwinds and the ongoing bear market as reasons for its operational wind-down. The news comes a week after America’s biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase, announced it is halting payments with the Silvergate bank.

Meanwhile, in related news, the crypto exchange Gemini (the one founded and run by the Winklevoss twins) has denied reports that JPMorgan Chase has ended their banking relationship.

Let’s see how Bitcoin and pals are faring…

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.05 trillion, down near 1% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

So, what with the Silvergate news and the growing likelihood of Jerome Powell and his Fed feeding markets a sh*t sandwich (minus bread) at its next FOMC meeting in a couple of weeks, is it any wonder Bitcoin’s slipping a bit?

It might be surprising to some, though, that it hasn’t been losing its grip on key support levels at a faster rate given the nervy macroeconomic outlook.

But, while BTC and ETH are hodling up relatively okay (for the moment), altcoins might be in the process of being teared a new one. By the looks of things in the crypto majors there, we could be seeing the start of a hefty altcoin dump, if popular Layer 2 project Polygon’s MATIC token price is any indication.

Hang on, is there positive movement at the XRP station?

One thing, though, look at XRP. It’s actually up 2.5%. Why? There are rumours that its founder Ripple Labs’ legal stoush with the SEC could be climaxing.

Yep, we’ve hinted as much before, but this time, a conclusion really might be in sight… according to attorney John Deaton, who has been representing the XRP community as an amicus curiae. Deaton believes the judge will be issuing a summary judgement imminently.

 

But let’s see what else is shaking out, further down the market-cap list…

 

Uppers and downers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$8.87 billion to about US$425 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

DAILY PUMPERS

• Toncoin (TON), (market cap: US$3.5 billion) +3%

• Rocket Pool (RPL), (mc: US$709 million) +2%

 

There’s a hell of a lot more slumping than mildly pumping in the Cryptoverse today…

 

DAILY SLUMPERS

• SingularityNET (AGIX), (market cap: US$428 million) -13%

• ImmutableX (IMX), (mc: US$817 million) -10%

• The Graph (GRT), (mc: US$1.1 billion) -9%

• Synthetix (SNX), (mc: US$818 million) -8%

• Solana (SOL), (mc: US$7 billion) -8%

• Fantom (FTM), (mc: US$1 billion) -8%

• Stacks (STX), (mc: US$848 million) -7%

 

Around the blocks

Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse.

https://twitter.com/eddyiskongz/status/1633591310358839296

https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1633594924259069952

Here’s Ben Simpson, CEO of the Collective Shift crypto-education outfit with a couple of good points. Firstly, be very wary of any crypto projects that rope you in to locking up your funds for crazy periods. That should be obvious to most, but worth reminding.

He flags something positive, too, though – the fact Amazon is moving into the Web3 world with an upcoming NFT marketplace of its own, reportedly launching in April.

And, to finish proceedings this morning, apropos of nothing (although the fourth Test in India does begin later today)…

 

Read MoreBitcoinCryptocurrencyEthereum

You might be interested in