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The crypto market has a sore tongue licking its wounds since being bear-mauled on Saturday harder than Leo DiCaprio’s character in The Revenant. That said, BTC, ETH and pals, especially Synthetix, have bounced back into the new week.

If you’re still here, still invested in crypto in some way, you’re hopefully not too “REKT” by one of the very worst sell-offs in crypto history. Apparently only May 2021’s major dumpage was heavier than the latest chapter in all this carnage.

But if you’re a true believer, then maybe, hopefully, you’re in a position to see it all as an averaging-in opportunity over time.

The past 24 hours have reportedly seen more than US$250 million liquidated in the market. Interestingly, the majority (more than 63% of those losing their positions) have been traders shorting Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Longing or shorting aside, though, as the YouTuber, investor and analyst Lark Davis points out, the total realised BTC losses over the past three days “are staggering”. It amounts to more than US$7.3 billion in BTC losses notched up in that time.

Synthetix

On-chain analytics firm Glassnode has all the brutalisation neatly recorded for you in pretty charts here…

But what about all those bottoming out signals analysts have been pointing out? In theory, you’d think much of them would still apply, such as the now lowest-ever Bitcoin relative strength index (RSI) reading.

They probably do need to be taken with an extra grain of salt at this point, though, as the macro-bearish elements continue to push not only crypto, but stonks, into unchartered territory.

And that’s territory for crypto that’s seen some Bitcoin miners forced to sell off their holdings (about 9,000 of their BTC sold in the past seven days), plus all-time highs from previous bull cycles breached – for both Bitcoin and Ethereum – although BTC is currently back above its near US$20k level from 2017.

What’s been causing the sell-off? Aside from the much-discussed macro/inflation/war/recession/Fed factors, the “crypto contagion” brought about by the Terra LUNA implosion is still playing out. Celsius, Three Arrows Capital… what/who next?

Former BitMEX (crypto exchange) CEO Arthur Hayes actually thinks a large institutional entity – Canada’s Bitcoin Purpose Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) – triggered the latest selling pressure through its own forced liquidations…

Do take anything Hayes says with a grain of salt, however. It probably shouldn’t be forgotten he was sentenced in May to two years’ probation with six months’ home detention after pleading guilty to a lack of anti-money laundering compliance at BitMEX.

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at roughly US$951 billion, up a relieving 6.2% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

It’s nice to see the Band-Aids stemming at least some of the blood, with most of the majors over the past 24 hours recovering some losses. That said, it’s also kinda funny how much of the market was seemingly freaking out about Bitcoin’s price at this level a week ago, calling for US$13k or lower, but is today in a much better mood at pretty much the same spot.

For reference, Bitcoin (BTC) crashed to as low as US$17,760 on Saturday, whereas no. 2 crypto Ethereum (ETH) staggered to US$897 – both levels not seen in around 18 months.

Is that it, then? Sideways and up only now? As Hayes points out, the potential for the market to experience similar “pockets of forced selling”, ie. more price pain, still remains pretty high.

“Given the poor state of risk management by cryptocurrency lenders and over generous lending terms, expect more pockets of forced selling of $BTC and $ETH as the market figures out who is swimming naked,” wrote the former BitMEX man.

Meanwhile, regarding Bitcoin’s bottom, crypto’s favourite topic at the moment, here’s some non-professional financial advice from the analyst Rekt Capital…

Aside from some strong recovery on various top coins today, one other thing catching our eye in the “crypto majors” is the battle of the two top stablecoins – Tether (USDT) and USD Coin (USDC), with the latter consistently gaining market share just lately…

 

 

Uppers and downers: 11–100 – Synthetix surges

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$7.9 billion to about US$341 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time.

DAILY PUMPERS

• Synthetix Network (SNX), (market cap: US$607 million) +58%

• ApeCoin (APE), (mc: US$1.39 billion) +22%

• STEPN (GMT), (mc: US$467 billion) +21%

• Aave (AAVE), (mc: US$833 million) +17%

• Elrond (EGLD), (mc: US$1.3 billion) 16%

 

Synthetix (SNX), one of DeFi’s OGs, is having a particularly green day today, on the back of it becoming the third-largest protocol in crypto by trading-fee consumption.

The platform, founded by Sydney’s Kain Warwick (elder brother to Illuvium’s Kieran, Grant and Aaron) has seen a big rise in trading volumes and revenues over the past seven days or so.

Is it making a comeback, then? Like much of the decentralised finance sector, the platform, which mints and trades synthetic assets (a combo of cryptos and traditional derivative assets), is well down from its all-time high – 90% down, in fact.

According to Crypto Briefing, the spike in trading-fee usage translates to a surge in profits for SNX stakers, which has sent the token’s staking yield soaring to 60.2% APY.

 

DAILY SLUMPERS 

• FLEX Coin (FLEX), (market cap: US$465 million) -2%

• Chain (LEO), (mc: US$1.78 billion) -2%

• TRON (TRX), (mc: US$5.67 billion) -2%

• Helium (HNT), (mc: US$1.16 billion) -1%

 

Around the blocks

To finish, a selection of randomness that stuck with us on our journey through the Crypto Twitterverse over the past few days…

 

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