Bitcoin Drops to $22,000 Mark, Most Altcoins Lose Steam Amid Silvergate Chaos

The past 24 hours led to a drastic change in crypto prices after chaos unfolded around Silvergate bank, and its link to the bankrupt FTX exchange came under the scanner in the US. Bitcoin dropped by 5.12 percent on national as well as international exchanges on Friday, March 3. The cryptocurrency is currently trading at $22,325 (roughly Rs. 18 lakh) — that marks a two-week low for the digital asset. Over the last day, the value of BTC has sunk by $1,160 (roughly Rs. 95,520).

Ether tumbled down the price ladder by 5.25 percent on Friday. The second most valued cryptocurrency is presently trading at $1,568 (roughly Rs. 1.29 lakh), showed the crypto price tracker by Gadgets 360. In the 24 hours that have gone by, ETH shed $78 (roughly Rs. 6,422) from its pricing.

“The Silvergate fallout has contributed to this decline. Several other factors have also led to a decrease in the value of numerous cryptocurrencies over the last 24 hours, including the release of US' manufacturing data and uncertainties about access to banking for crypto companies in the US,” Edul Patel, the CEO and co-founder of Mudrex told Gadgets 360.

Stablecoins such as Tether, USD Coin, and Binance USD — all recorded losses amid the market turmoil.

Value dips also struck an array of other altcoins including Binance Coin, Cardano, Polygon, Polkadot, and Litecoin.

Solana particularly witnessed a low-trading sentiment this entire week. “SOL was down by 12 percent after the Solana blockchain witnessed yet another outage,” Parth Chaturvedi, Crypto Ecosystem Lead, CoinSwitch told Gadgets 360.

Only Augur and FLEX reflected miniscule profits.

The overall crypto market valuation dropped by 4.45 percent in the last 24 hours. As per CoinMarketCap, the market cap stands at $1.03 trillion (roughly Rs. 84,46,588 crore).

“As US Bond Market's Yield curve inversion continues to point at an H2 recession, globally, investors seem to be turning increasingly ‘risk off', building cash and short-term US treasury positions. Although a pleasant surprise came from Chinese manufacturing data yesterday, the global economic recovery is still not out of the woods,” Chaturvedi added.

“Big crypto-specific development to watch out for is the unfolding of events at Silvergate, as the crypto-friendly bank failed to file its annual report to the SEC, and its stock has come under heavy selling pressure,” he said. “Markets are watching with bated breath to see if there's another domino left to fall post the FTX fiasco.”

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