📉Markets tank! BTC comes under selling pressure😓

Crypto market volatility rises sharply as liquidity falters across the board

Crypto markets traded lower last week, with the overall market cap falling below the $1.2 trillion mark. There was a dramatic increase in price volatility during the course of the week as several triggers resulted in actuated directional moves. Lack of liquidity in the markets is being touted as the main reason for heightened volatility, with rumors suggesting some market makers like Jump cutting back operations!

BTC came under selling pressure, falling slightly lower than the psychologically important $27k level, but has since regained some ground. Lots of reasons are being speculated on the reasons behind the fall in prices, including increasing network congestion, rising transaction fees, and even an incorrectly tagged US government wallet dumping a large position in a huge sell order on Wednesday. ETH, too, is down over the course of the week and had a couple of major network-wide scares as mainnet transaction finality came under question!

Last Updated 11 am, 15th May 2023

Overall, there's a cautious overhang across the market, with most tokens and coins trading in the red last week. Even the recent eye-popping rally witnessed in the meme-coin mania cooled off significantly last week, with PEPE prices correcting by 40% and wiping off almost $400 million in market value. There was a similar fall in prices seen in the latest rage of BRC-20 tokens and Ordinals, as a speculative frenzy was followed by profit booking.

Outliers in the list were Bitcoin SV and Bitcoin Cash, both BTC forks, which were positioned as an alternative to the congested Bitcoin network and rallied in prices! More positive price action was seen in Litecoin (LTC), which is also referred to as "Digital Silver", as it is approaching its halving event in less than 2 months! Liquid Staking Derivative tokens like LDO and RPL, too, witnessed a strong rebound in prices over the week.

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Before we conclude, here’s a quick look at other important news updates from last week's crypto world.

Ethereum resumes finalizing blocks after second outage in 24 hours

The Ethereum blockchain experienced a technical outage on Friday, forcing the network to stop finalizing blocks for over an hour, the second such outage in the past 24 hours. The network has resumed finalizing blocks at publishing time. The cause of the outage is not known, but the Ethereum Foundation said when the blocks are not being finalized, it is possible that pending transactions might be re-ordered or dropped from the network. (Source: CoinDesk)

Digital Asset to launch global blockchain network

Financial technology firm Digital Asset said it will launch a privacy-enabled interoperable blockchain network to provide a decentralized infrastructure for institutional clients. The participants of the network—-called Canton Network—-include BNP Paribas, Deloitte, Cboe Global Markets, Goldman Sachs, S&P Global, and Microsoft. The network connects applications built with Daml, Digital Asset’s smart-contract language, allowing various systems in financial markets to interoperate and synchronize. (Source: CoinDesk)

Tether posts $1.48B in Q1 profit, discloses BTC reserves

Stablecoin issuer Tether reported $1.48 billion in net profit for the first quarter of the year, double the previous quarter’s result. The company said it held $1.5 billion of bitcoin on its balance sheet—or about 2% of about $80 billion in reserves—and $3.4 billion of gold, or about 4% of reserves. The results came as a breather for the $131 billion stablecoin market as several coins lost their dollar pegs amid market turbulence. (Source: CoinDesk)

Binance to exit Canada; cites new crypto rules

Binance said it is winding up operations in Canada, citing the unfavorable regulatory environment. The world’s largest crypto exchange by volume tweeted on Friday that new guidelines regarding stablecoins and curbs imposed on investors prompted the decision. In February, the Canadian authorities made it mandatory for crypto platforms operating out of the country to seek regulatory nod before allowing customers to buy or deposit stablecoins. (Source: CoinDesk)

Cardano’s scaling tool goes live on blockchain’s mainnet

Cardano’s scaling tool Hydra Head has gone live on the blockchain’s mainnet in the latest DeFi-focused upgrade to the network. Each Hydra Head works as a “mini ledger” shared among a small group of participants, thereby helping to speed up transactions. It is hoped that developers will be able to use the tools to add specialized DeFi protocols on top of Cardano. (Source: CoinDesk)

Bittrex files for bankruptcy protection

US crypto exchange Bittrex has filed for bankruptcy protection in the US state of Delaware. The firm had announced in March this year that it would cease US operations by the end of April after being sued by the SEC. The exchange has more than 100,000 creditors, and its assets and liabilities are within the range of $500 million to $1 billion, according to a court filing. (Source: CoinDesk)