Crypto Markets Pull Back From Brink in Respite From FTX Rout
Cryptocurrencies regained some ground following Wednesday's plunge, offering investors a respite from a rout fueled by Binance Holdings Ltd.'s withdrawal of its offer to buy FTX.com.
Bitcoin rose as much as 4.4% after tumbling as low as $15,574, a level unseen since November 2020. Ether climbed 3.6%. The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 100 Index was down 3.9% as of 10:23 a.m. in Singapore on Thursday, after having fallen as much as 6.8%.
“Expect the unexpected in the days ahead,” Genesis Trading analysts Ainsley To and Gordon Grant wrote in a note Wednesday that highlighted the explosion of volatility across the crypto-markets complex.
Crypto markets have been roiled by the saga involving FTX, which until just a few days ago was seen as one of the top entities, with charismatic founder Sam Bankman-Fried seen as the crypto's version of John Pierpont Morgan. Its FTT token plunged amid concerns fueled by Twitter comments from Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, and is now below $2 after trading near $25 just a week ago. Bankman-Fried and Zhao co-announced a non-binding offer by Binance to buy FTX, which was then scrapped on Wednesday.
“Since I entered the crypto industry in 2016, very few periods tested its market infrastructure and participants” the way the turmoil of recent days did, said crypto hedge-fund manager Dan Liebau of Modular Asset Management.
Value Loss
Bitcoin, the largest token by market value, had plunged almost 16% on Wednesday. It reached a record high of almost $69,000 a year ago. FTT, the utility token of the FTX exchange, is down 92% this week, and was trading around $1.94.
The FTX-Binance saga calls to mind the turmoil involving Celsius -- the crypto lender that collapsed earlier this year -- as well as
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