Bitcoin, Ether Fall as FTX Implosion, Job Cuts in Tech Industry Cloud Outlook

Bitcoin and Ether prices fell in Thursday morning trading along with all other top 10 tokens by market capitalization, excluding stablecoins. The ongoing unfolding of who is vulnerable to the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange is unnerving investors, while layoffs in the tech industry point to a difficult economy ahead.

See related article: Crypto exchanges see record week of BTC outflows, following FTX saga

Fast facts

• Bitcoin fell 1.3% to $16,666 in the 24 hours to 8 a.m. in Hong Kong, while Ether lost 2.9% to $1,215, according to CoinMarketCap.

• Bitcoin withdrawals from centralized crypto exchanges hit historic highs this week as the collapse of FTX.com prompted investors to turn to self-custody options. Bitcoin exchanges rose to 742,401 between November 9 and November 15, with the largest withdrawal of 168,287 coins on November 9, according to CryptoQuant.

• “The drama surrounding FTX upset what was otherwise an emerging positive setup for crypto, as the significant deleveraging in May and June 2022 had left few if any large marginal sellers in this area,” analysts David Duong and Brian Cubellis of the US-based crypto exchange Coinbase wrote in a monthly outlook report. “However, the recent market turbulence and absence of large buyers has left the asset class vulnerable, potentially extending an already long crypto winter,” according to the report, which said the crypto slump could extend to the end of 2023.

• Polygon saw the biggest losses on CoinMarketCap’s list, falling 4.3% to $0.90, although it still traded up 10.6% over the past seven days as one of the strongest performers amid market volatility over the past two weeks.

• XRP fell 3.3% to $0.37 but is still up 13% in the past week as US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase filed an amicus brief on Monday in support of Ripple Labs Inc. – the company that uses XRP to power its payment system – in its lawsuit with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

• Tracey Plowman, CEO of Bamboo 61 Pty Ltd., an Australian company offering micro-investments in cryptocurrency, told Discard that the industry was still coming to terms with the fallout and uncertainty from FTX. “Regulatory certainty is what the industry is seeking,” she said by email. “Regulation must support innovation, not stifle it, while providing certainty to industry participants that they are building businesses based on regulations that will not change.”

• US stocks ended the day lower on Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.1%, the S&P 500 fell 0.8% and the technology-dominated Nasdaq Composite fell 1.5%.

• The losses come as Amazon.com Inc. became the latest tech giant to announce mass layoffs on Wednesday, when the Wall Street Journal reported that the company could cut as many as 10,000 of its roughly 1.54 million employees. Amazon shares fell 1.8 percent on Wednesday.

• That brings the total number of layoffs in the once-booming tech sector to 30,000 in recent weeks across just three companies, Amazon, Meta Platforms Inc. and Twitter Inc., which was recently acquired by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.

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