Hopes of a sustained relief rally in the crypto markets were dashed on Wednesday morning, when the 5% plus of gains seen yesterday were all but wiped out, bringing global market capitalisation shooting down to US$915bn.
Bitcoin’s US$20,000 support line failed to hold, having contracted nearly 7% to US$18,800.
Ethereum suffered similar losses as dipped below US$1,300.
Heavier losses still were felt by Ripple (XRP), which encountered a double-digit hit to its now-US$21bn market cap.
Other large downward movers this Wednesday morning included Terra Classic (LUNC), Compound Finance, Neo, and the Zcash privacy coin.
In the large-cap network token space, BNB, Cardano, Polygon and Solanna dipped between 5% to 7% apiece, while Polkadot underperformed further still.
The few daily risers included Quant Network’s QNT token, whose market cap jumped 8% to US$1.6bn, and RSR, the governance token for the Reserve stablecoin.
Total value locked across the decentralised finance (DeFi) space is currently US$53.9bn.
In the news
Alex Mashinsky has read the room and resigned as chief executive officer of Celsius Network.
Mashinsky oversaw one of the most dramatic crashes in crypto history, when the lender became illiquid, trapping billions of dollars of users’ funds and driving the company to bankruptcy.
“I remain willing and available to continue to work with the company and their advisors to achieve a successful reorganisation,” he said in a statement.
Chinese Bitcoin mining company Bitdeer is setting up a US$250mln fund targeting distressed mining companies who have been hit by the recent crypto winter.
The fund aims to buy up assets at a discount, with chief executive officer Matt Kong telling Bloomberg that “there are opportunities in every cycle”.