Minorities in the Bitcoin community have theorized that the November lows of last year marked the cycle bottom for the cryptocurrency. The gloomy conditions in the cryptocurrency market were exacerbated by the FTX crash in the fourth quarter of last year. Near the end of November 2022, Bitcoin’s price fell to $15,479. The state of lethargy persisted for another few weeks after that. FTX decided to sell itself more to rival cryptocurrency exchange Binance after a mass exodus of customers caused by concerns over the company’s financial stability. Nonetheless, the purchase fell for while Binance was still conducting its due diligence on FTX’s financials.
Also Read: Customers of FTX initiate class-action lawsuits in order to receive preferential damages.
In its bankruptcy filing, FTX stated that the worth of its assets was between $10 billion and $50 billion, and it named more than 130 linked firms located in dozens of countries. But in 2023, things started looking up for Bitcoin. Bitcoin (BTC) has recovered to its pre-FTX values just 27 days into the brand-new year. Indeed, the leading cryptocurrency asset on the market has risen by almost 40% so far this year. The crypto industry has felt the effects of FTX’s stunning collapse. The losses are so high that some are beginning to doubt the resilience of the crypto sector as a whole. The value of Bitcoin and Ethereum plummeted, Tether stopped being tethered to the dollar, and a slew of other cryptocurrency projects have been hit hard.
The Shift From Trading Bitcoin
As a result of the FTX surge, customers’ focus has shifted away from holding their coins on centralized cryptos and toward alternative methods of storage. The FTX saga seems to have highlighted the damage that may be created with centralized storage, even though industry executives have previously warned about the security of internet platforms. There has been a net withdrawal of Bitcoin from most of the largest exchanges over the past week, indicating a decrease in storage that is outpacing inputs as users buy digital currencies.
As a result, over $3 billion worth of cryptocurrency has been transferred from exchanges to cold storage. People who want to keep their cryptocurrency assets safe from hackers are increasingly turning to hardware wallets like the Ledger Nano S and Trezor. The highest decrease was at Gemini, where customers withdrew roughly 30,000 Bitcoin in total. The number of withdrawal requests on Kraken, Binance, and Coinbase is all roughly the same. It is speculated that the FTX scandal and regulatory ambiguity in the US are linked to this exchange hit. Within the past week, regulatory agencies stated a hearing will be held to investigate what transpired at the exchange, and a call was made to extradite former Chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried from the Bahamas, where he was allegedly hiding out before making a break for Dubai.
So, what are the fallouts?
The values of Digital cryptocurrencies have dropped, and companies who backed FTX are taking write-downs on their investments. More stringent regulation of the complex business is being called for by politicians and government officials. On Saturday, FTX announced that it was transferring as many digital assets as possible to a new “cold wallet custodian,” a method of holding assets offline that does not permit remote control.
FTX had several sports-related deals that are now falling apart. The Miami Heat of the National Basketball Association and Miami-Dade County, Florida, voted on Friday to sever ties with FTX and rebrand the arena where the team plays. Mercedes announced on Friday morning that it will immediately begin removing FTX branding from its Formula One vehicle.
Also Read: FTX’s Collapse was not an Accident but a crime
Downfall Of FTX
The emerging picture suggests three significant events contributed to the downfall of FTX:
- Users may borrow digital assets from the exchange and enhance their leverage in deals because FTX was primarily a margin trading exchange. Nonetheless, the exchange made excessive and unauthorized loans to margin traders from customer cash.
- The risk associated with the FTT token: FTX had used its trading token, FTT, as collateral for borrowing funds. The exchange was reinvesting its earnings into the token economy by purchasing and burning FTTs. Set up by Changpeng Zhao’s post from last week threatening to sell all of Binance’s FTT.
- According to Coinmetrics’ analysis, FTX may have bailed out Alameda Research, a sister trading firm, by pouring 173 million FTT tokens ($4 billion at the time) into the company. According to reports, after the capital injection Alameda took out loans from FTX supported by deposits from FTX clients, owing the company $10 billion.
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