Mooners and Shakers: Bitcoin, Ethereum and Other Cryptos Get Some Relief; BlockFi faces bankruptcy

by · November 15, 2022

Inflation in the United States maybe shows signs of turning a corner and the US Dollar Index has sold off. The crypto market? Bitcoin, Ethereum and others have had a small bounce.

Little is the operative word, but we’ll take it. These are macro-related conditions that crypto-watchers have been sweating over for months, and usually the market might have seen a bit more of a lift — perhaps more like the Nasdaq 100 (+8.2% over the past five days) and the S&P 500 (+4.7% ).

But of course the market has FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried and cronies to thank for an anemic push, which otherwise could have been something closer to a classic crypto moon mission.

FTX crypto contagion – BlockFi going bankrupt?

BlockFi, one of the industry’s most prominent lenders (in the same spirit as the collapsed Celsius and Voyager companies), is preparing a potential bankruptcy filing after halting withdrawals of customer deposits, according to reports including The Wall Street Journal.

The firm cited its “significant exposure” to bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, according to the report.

BlockFi halted withdrawals from its platform at the end of last week, expressing that it was “shocked and appalled” by the FTX bed-crazy incidents.

However, the firm’s exposure to FTX may seem obvious in hindsight, given the fact that it received a US$400 million revolving credit facility from Sam Bankman-Fried’s company earlier this year when BlockFi had run into liquidity problems following the Terra Luna collapse.

Implosion begat implosion.

Liquid Global and the SALT lending platform stop withdrawals

And so the crypto contagion continues to spread. Two more crypto firms have now told their clients that they have stopped withdrawals, citing FTX exposure.

Liquid Group was acquired by FTX Trading Ltd in May last year plus all of the company’s subsidiaries, which include a company called Quoine, which has been no stranger to controversy in the past.

Who’s next without helmet or box, then? There is another crypto lender – SALT.

“The collapse of FTX has impacted our business,” SALT CEO Shawn Owen said in a message sent to consumers. “Until we are able to determine the extent of this impact with specific details that we feel confident are factually accurate, we have halted deposits and withdrawals on the SALT platform with immediate effect.”

Meanwhile, Sam Bankman-Fried has ended his bizarre Twitter thread that began with “What HAPPENED” over nine separate tweets, ending with the following:

Top 10 overview

With the total crypto market capitalization at USD 883 billion, up 2% since this time yesterday, here is the current status of the top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

Bitcoin traded back above USD 17ka a little earlier, as at least some semblance appeared to return to the global macro outlook on the back of lower than expected producer price index (PPI) numbers in the US and the cooling of the US dollar.

Ethereum had also rallied on the good vibes from inflation-related data – slightly closer to USD 1,300.

XRP is still up a decent amount in the last 24 hours, which probably has something to do with a potential front-run announcement (by Fox Business yesterday) of a settlement in the SEC vs Ripple lawsuit.

We say potentially. Of course, it could just have been a simple mistake.

Overdraft and downdraft: 11–100

With a market cap of about $6.93 billion to about $322 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour winners and losers at press time. (Statistics accurate at time of publication, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

DAILY PUMPS

• Stacks (STX), (market cap: USD 338 million) +12%

• Chillies (CHZ), (mc: USD 1.19 billion) +11%

• Quant (QNT), (mc: USD 1.17 billion) +9%

• Algorand (ALGO), (mc: USD 2 billion) +8%

• Lido DAO (LDO), (mc: USD 910 million) +7%

DAILY SLUMPERS

• Trust Wallet (TWT), (market cap: USD 814 million) -10%

• Tokenize Xchange (TKX), (mc: USD 698 million) -6%

• Chain (XCN), (mc: USD 1.01 million) -5%

• Klaytn (KLAY), (mc: USD 518 million) -4%

• Synthetix network (SNX), (mc: USD 431 million) -4%

Around the blocks

An assortment of rumours, gossip, coincidences and pertinence that stuck with us on our morning movements through the Crypto Twitterverse…

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