Cramer calls bitcoin collapse Crypto Monday, says many technical executives call it a con

CNBC’s Jim Cramer called bitcoin’s collapse Crypto Monday, in what he fears is day 1 of a calculation in the digital currency market.

Speaking off-air to technical executives during his trip to San Francisco last week, Cramer said he got the feeling that Silicon Valley thinks crypto is a scam and promoters have taken an awful lot of money from unsuspecting investors. That revelation was just one of the 15 things Cramer said he learned from spending time in the West for the first time since the beginning of the Covid pandemic.

Cramer, who has put some of his own money into crypto in recent years, said he was able to get his money out of ether, the world’s second-largest crypto, which had 20 percent. He said he initially broke even on his original investment.

Monday’s fall of 17% sent bitcoin below $ 23,000. It is a 66% decline from the all-time high in November. The world’s largest cryptocurrency is no stranger to so-called cryptocurrencies that have given way to any recoveries back to records. However, Cramer questioned whether those he called “bitcoin lunatics” would easily enter the crypto market to stop the bleeding as they have done in the past.

The pain is widespread.

• The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase lost 13% on Monday.
• A rival crypto exchange, Binance, temporarily halted bitcoin withdrawals “due to a deadlocked transaction that caused a backlog.”
• Crypto lender Celsius suspended all bank withdrawals and transfers, citing “extreme market conditions.”
• MicroStrategy, led by bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor, whose company is heavily invested in the digital currency, lost 26%.

The plunge into bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market in general is not a systemic risk, but rather a “necessary clearing up of speculation,” Cramer said. His Charitable Trust, which is the portfolio of CNBC’s Investing Club, has no exposure to crypto or equities related to it.

(See here for a complete list of shares in Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.)

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