← Go back Aug 08, 2023
It, um, tanked more than 11%, tumbling below $US26k as August turns a distinct shade of red amid news that SpaceX has (apparently) sold off a large amount of BTC.Bitcoin earlier hit lows not seen since June 20, dipping briefly below a $500 billion market cap.Any good news? Yep, it’s no longer boring. Any better news?For the latest crypto news, sign up here for free Stockhead daily newslettersBitcoin and the market have stemmed the bleeding somewhat since an early-hours bloodbath.But you want the bad news contextualised, right? Jeez, you want it all on a plate, don’t you?Okay, here goes… it’s the crappy macro, innit.The crapro-economic climate, largely stemming from the great storytellers of our time – China and the US. It’s inflation, it’s the hawkish Fed, it’s rising interest rates… it’s, it’s… Mabo… the vibe.It’s also a few other very specicfically crypto-related things, too, mind. Which we’ll get to in a sec.But first, our Stockhead’s own non-fungible Eddy Sunarto summed it up much better than we just did in Friday morning’s Market Highlights roundup, when he wrote:“Overnight, the S&P 500 tumbled further by -0.77%, blue chip Dow Jones by -0.84%, and tech heavy Nasdaq by -1.17%.“Sentiment has been hammered in recent days as a spate of bad news from China and the prospect of more Fed hikes have derailed the year’s rally.”Meanwhile, “Americans react” in soppy, eyelash-drooping fashion to this reasonably-well-expressed sentiment about the sh*tty US dollar from their country’s answer to Jonny Bairstow, which should’ve already been bleedingly obvious to most, if not all of them for quite some time now.“Damn, bro. Truth. He speaks truth.” (Thumps heart, closes eyes, tilts head and nods slowly with solemn meaning for the camera. – Three takes… got it.)Top 10 overviewWith the overall crypto market cap at $US1.1 trillion at 2.30pm Friday (AEST), down 6.9 per cent since the same time Thursday, here’s the state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.Well then, about a quarter of Australians are cursing as they check in on their crypto portfiolios today, with a sea of red across the magic internet money market.Bitcoin and Ethereum led the losses, but then the altcoins took that ball and really ran hard with it up the sideline… unfortunately just in the opposite direction from the correct tryline.XRP, in particular, had a shocker overnight, continuing some recent bad form. MORE FROM STOCKHEAD: Crypto ETF leader of the pack | Fintech payments mega trend rolls on | Tech small caps profit from profitThere’s a reason for this, and it’s because the US Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler is rubbing his hands together and cackling like the Wicked Witch from the West (aka Elizabeth Warren).It’s been reported that a judge has granted the SEC approval to file an appeal in the Ripple/XRP case, that recently saw a favourable outcome for Ripple.That ruling decreed that XRP was not a security, therefore letting Ripple off the hook from SEC claims that XRP was sold to investors as an unregistered security product. The appeal approval seems like a blow to Ripple, but here’s another take and clarification:SpaceX sells off Bitcoin, Dogecoin slumps Meanwhile, Dogecoin is also slumping big time. We think we know why. Elon. Musk.It’s been revealed SpaceX has “written down the value” of its BTC holdings. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, SpaceX recorded $US373 million worth of Bitcoin holdings on its balance sheet in 2021 and 2022 but has since written down its value and has sold out of the asset.However, as Watcher.Guru notes here, full confirmation on whether the entire $373 million worth of the asset was sold is still up in the air.Why’s this affected Dogecoin? Only because the price of DOGE appears to correlate pretty much directly to everything Musk does or says – positive or negative. That’s just the way it rolls. Stoopid? Yep.Josh Gilbert, Market analyst over at eToro, told us this, via an emailed note:“Whenever you have a big name in the industry selling Bitcoin, especially someone as influential as Elon Musk, it will put the price under pressure.“Arguably, Elon Musk has one of the most influential voices in the world, and when he makes moves in crypto, the market moves accordingly.”With that in mind, keep half an eye on DOGE, because the bloke (Musk, not Gilbert) owns Twitter/X and is turning the thing into a payments/everything app, remember?Commentary from BTC Markets’ Caroline BowleFor some further context about today’s crypto dippage, we thought we’d quickly cut and paste some choice insights and analysis sent to us by Caroline Bowler’s people over at BTC Markets – one of Australia’s best crypto exchanges. (Not sponsored – it just is.)Here you are:“In the past 24-hour period, the cryptocurrency market, has seen an unprecedented sell off considering the low volatility and market consolidation of the past few weeks.“This type of negative price action is usually attributed to major market events such as was seen in the FTX sell off in November of last year that saw the market lose 14% in a single day.“Similarly, an instance earlier in 2022 involving the Luna de-peg also demonstrated the potency of such market forces.“In the absence of major market news, we looked at the total liquidations on Coinglass, a prominent platform specialising in cryptocurrency futures trading and data dissemination.“They reported a staggering 175,000 traders have been liquidated within the past 24-hours, totalling losses of $US1.05 billion.“Of note, is a single liquidation order on Binance on the ETHBUSD trading pair, costing an eye-watering $US55.92 million.”Uppers and downersSome of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at 2.30pm Friday (AEST). Stats based on CoinGecko.com data.PUMPERS (11-100 market cap position) Rollbit Coin (RLB), (market cap: $US540 million) +8.7% FLEX Coin (FLEX), (market cap: $US6680 million) +87.6%Pax Dollar (USDP), (market cap: $UAS505 million) +0.8%Yep, we’re so desperate for good news we’ll even take a lift of less than 1 per cent. Visit Stockhead, where ASX small caps are big dealsSLUMPERS (11-100 market cap position) Litecoin (LTC), (market cap: $US4.71 billion) -16.4% ApeCoin (APE), (market cap: $US561 million) -14.3% Bitcoin Cash (BCH), (market cap: $US3.52 billion) -13.2% Stellar (XLM), (market cap: $US3.07 billion) -11.3% Shiba inu (SHIB), (market cap: $US4.82 billion) -11.2%Shiba Inu is copping flak/FUD from sections of the cryptoverse after launching its “Shibarium” blockchain, with reports that more than $1.7 million worth of ETH has been stuck in the bridging process over to the new chain.Here’s the more hopeful angle from “Shib Dream” … which obviously has a vested interest…Around the blocks Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse.(Ahem, not financial advice there.)This content first appeared on stockhead.com.auSUBSCRIBEGet the latest Stockhead news delivered free to your inbox. Click here
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