Bitcoin, Ether Drop Over 5% in Massive Sell-Off as Market Continues to Digest Silvergate

On Friday, major digital assets saw a sharp decrease as the work day got underway in Hong Kong. When investors left crypto bank Silvergate on Thursday during trading in the United States, the price of bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) both fell by more than 5%. Silvergate’s shares also fell by 58%. The majority of the other 10 biggest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization saw decreases that were comparable to those of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

“Institutions are a little jumpy as Silvergate appears to be having troubles,” Nick Ruck of ContentFi, a Web3 venture studio, wrote in a letter to CoinDesk. “Institutions are a bit jumpy as Silvergate seems to be having issues.” Ruck also alluded to the release of part of Mt. Gox’s bitcoin as another cause of volatility. This would result in a rise in the amount of bitcoin that is now in circulation.

Around 10:20 local time in Hong Kong, Coinbase, a prominent cryptocurrency exchange, started having connection problems as a direct result of the quick sell-off that had place earlier. Several prominent cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Binance, Bitfinex, Kucoin, OKX, and Kraken, did not report experiencing the same problems.

When trading hours in Asia started, the price of Bitcoin dropped to an intraday low of $22,020, after having remained more or less constant around $23,500 for the whole of the previous day. After falling by about $24,000, it showed signs of making a little recovery and returned to a level just below that.

Ether followed a path that was quite similar to bitcoin’s, dropping to $1,550 after spending the previous day fluctuating very little from its price of $1,650. According to CoinMarketCap, the total value of the bitcoin market fell by more than $20 billion to 431.9 billion dollars. The total market cap for cryptocurrencies now sits at 1.07 trillion dollars. According to Coinglass, the open interest in bitcoin futures has decreased by 8.8 percent during the course of the previous four hours. The number of open positions in ether fell by 5%.