crypto's fall in 10 charts

 By Connie Lin <https://www.fastcompany.com/user/connielin>

As the cryptocurrency market burns through its worst crash in years,
Twitter is ablaze with charts streaked in red, suggesting that a new
crypto winter is here.

The great downturn came during a bearish week for Wall Street stocks, a
correlation that didn’t escape notice:

Despite working through what must be the most horrifying fire drill in
recent memory, some traders still tried to joke about the frazzled days
spent glued to their computer screens, watching assets fall through the
floor.

Others found a different type of humor in the madness.

If you were wondering: The mystery chart turned out to be the price of
Luna coin, the cryptocurrency token meant to buoy the floundering Terra
USD stablecoin—which was designed to stay consistently valued at $1 but
sank to under 40 cents in recent days. Luna, meanwhile, dropped from
nearly $120 in early April to roughly 1 cent Thursday—an event so
catastrophic that its developer Terraform Labs was forced to halt its
blockchain operations for a brief
period midday.

Luna’s dramatic demise could ultimately be one of the most consequential
moments in crypto history.

It’s now at least $30 billion lost.

But altogether, global cryptocurrencies have lost nearly $500 billion in
the past week—meaning plenty of other tokens are in their own worlds of
pain. For example, Litecoin, which ranks among the top 20 tokens by
market capitalization, has dropped to pre-pandemic (i.e. pre-crypto
mania) prices.

Even Bitcoin—the world’s largest cryptocurrency, with a market
capitalization that surpassed $1 trillion at its peaks—is in trouble.
This chart observes that Bitcoin has not just dropped below its January
2021 price, but is also thousands of dollars away from reaching a
calculated support line—which refers to a low point at which
probabilities converge to predict people start buying the dip, thus
bringing the price back up.

A data analytics firm, meanwhile, seems optimistic that the support line
is close—but that hardly distracts from the graph’s overall bleakness.

Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, has also dropped to
pre-2021 levels while the community licks its wounds and waits for
support to engage.

 

And Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange platform that had a
blockbuster Nasdaq IPO last year at the height of crypto fanaticism,
isn’t faring any better.

But if this is all too distressing, maybe it’s time to take a break from
from DexTools—and try to keep whatever faith you have left. HODL
on, WAGMI. Let's hope

今次的脫鉤，有幣圈人士認為近日發生了UST的事件，人們對幣圈信心動搖，有機構趁機做空USDT。 《華爾街日報》在上月曾報導提及，許多對沖基金與加密貨幣相關投資機構正在賭注 USDT 價格將會下跌，稱為加密貨幣央行的 USDT 發行商 Tether 公司有擠兌風險。 其中 Genesis Global Trading Inc. 的部門主管 Matt Ballensweig 稱，這些機構正在透過 Genesis 的交易工具賣空 USDT，Ballensweig 稱參與賣空的投資機構有 Fir Tree Partners、Viceroy Research LLC 等 12 家投資機構。

另有幣圈人指出，今次沖擊USDT的是Blackrock 及 Citadel

另外，「2008 年雷曼兄弟 (Lehman Brothers) 破產，公司負債 6,000 億美元，觸發當年金融風暴。」Cinneamhain 資本合夥人 Adam Cochran 在 Twitter 提到。「現在中國恆大有 2,000 億元資產 (要平賣)、3,000 億元未還債務，即 5,000 億美元 — 恆大爆煲的話，基本上與雷曼兄弟事件差不多大鑊！」

Adam Cochran 提出，實際上加密貨幣市場的走勢，仍然與傳統金融市場緊密相連。假如恆大債券爆煲，任何債券、商業票據都會受打擊，市場上部分發行商隨時直接倒閉。「而兩大穩定幣發行商 Tether、Circle 都持有商業票據作為儲備資產⋯」

最近，Tether 回覆 The Block 查詢時披露，旗下儲備資產包括總值 308 億美元的商業票據與存款證 (COD)，但是從沒持有恆大發行的任何商業票據、債券或證券。

「Tether 持有的絕大多數商業票據，發行公司都都達到 A-2 及以上的債務評級。」但是，Tether 沒有回應有否持有其他中資公司發行的債券或商業票據。

第二大穩定幣 USDC 發行商 Circle，儲備資產亦包括大量公司債券及商業票據。今年 8 月，Circle 與合作夥伴 Coinbase 宣布逐步將儲備資產轉為全數美元現金及美國國庫債券。

 

Dailyclipper