News Updates November 22, 2022
1. Bitcoin Price Sinks to Lowest Level in 2 Years
A mixture of high-profile bankruptcy fears, regulatory pressure, and rampant short selling have crushed the price of Bitcoin.
At $15,649, Bitcoin has hit its lowest price since November 2020, as per CoinGecko data.
The latest price crash represents a fall of over 26% from $21,418 on November 5, before word of any of FTX’s financial issues leaked out.
The news comes as markets are reeling from continued fallout and cross-contamination from FTX’s slide into bankruptcy. Various high-profile celebrities, for example, have been ensnared in a lawsuit for promoting the exchange. Crypto firms like SALT, Liquid Global, and BlockFi have all halted withdrawals, citing exposure to FTX’s collapse.
Notably, Crypto prime broker Genesis is also reportedly considering bankruptcy after shuttering withdrawals last week.
According to sources reported by Bloomberg, the lender had been talking with private equity firm Apollo Capital and crypto exchange Binance about financing and attempted to raise $1 billion to fix its liquidity crisis.
A representative of the lender told Decrypt: "We have no plans to file bankruptcy imminently” and that its goal "is to resolve the current situation consensually without the need for any bankruptcy filing.”
Genesis pinpointed the sudden surge in customers looking to withdraw their assets in the immediate collapse of FTX as the main cause of their current financial woes. However, FTX has created unprecedented market turmoil, resulting in abnormal withdrawal requests which have exceeded our current liquidity.
2. FOMC Minutes Goes Public Tomorrow – BTC & ETH Values Continues to Plunge.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members usually release the updated reports of the inflationary scenario in the economy. Further the FOMC meeting held on November 1-2 will be revealed tomorrow with the current insights of the crypto markets.
As the entire investor community is awaiting for the release, the popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are still in freefall. Surprisingly, ETH is dipping down to $1100 with a bearish graph in the last 24 hours. On the other hand, it is evident that BTC is also plummeting with red margins.
Anticipating further updates in the current U.S. policy, many are looking forward to the reports of the FOMC minutes, tomorrow.
ETH prices continues bearish
As the entire crypto market is experiencing the downtrend, all the digital assets are sloping down its prices. Moreover, the top two cryptocurrencies are also in a worst state dipping down to their least margins.
The overall market performance of Ethereum (ETH) is declining day by day, facing a third consecutive fall today. Further the graph of the token is pointing down moving to a low point of $1,081.14. More so, earlier from November, ETH is trading at its crucial points dipping below $1100. However, the continuous market crunch will lead the crypto asset to fall hitting its weak points.
Unexpected BTC fall
Bitcoin is the top leading cryptocurrency, which withstands the Covid-19 pandemic and the LUNA crash. Unfortunately, the ongoing crisis of FTX affected the coin to a great extent. Significantly, the price of BTC fell into the well, trading at not less than $16,000. But all investors, crypto analysts are predicting for BTC to reach $10K soon. And, if this critical state for the crypto market continues, then it paves a way for it.
Thus, analysing the current market status, FOMC meeting minutes will provide the cues for the investors and other analysts to know the next interest rate increase of the market.
3. Crypto Market Loses $60B In Two Days As Bitcoin Price Plunges.
The past few days in the Bitcoin and crypto market have had a forceful impact from the bears. The prices of most of the crypto assets have been tolling to the south beyond expectation. In addition, the entire market is experiencing a decline due to the collapse of the FTX exchange.
The outcome of the recent events has raised more doubts in the crypto space. Bitcoin is dipping drastically and has gone below the $16K region. However, the altcoins are not left in the bearish trend. Lots of the assets have gone below their critical resistance levels, signifying a potential emergence of draught in the crypto market.
Following the continuous decline, the crypto market has lost about $60 billion in just two days. This has pushed the cumulative market cap to dip below $800 billion. The value sits at $785.71 billion at the press time, indicating a 1.53% drop over the past 24 hours.
Bitcoin Price Drops
The performance of the primary cryptocurrency has been less impressive in the declining crypto market. Bitcoin has failed to surpass the limitation at the $17K region throughout last week. Without volatility, the weekend was suppressive for the token as it stagnated around $16,6000 for two consecutive days.
Monday marked a different dimension for Bitcoin as the token price dropped to $16K. Gradually, BTC has been moving to the south to finally hit a new two-year low of $15,660.
A blockchain analytics firm, Glassnode, reported that Bitcoin’s current price had caused unrealized losses for whales.
At the time of writing, BTC is trading at $16,142, marking a growth. Its market cap is $308.23 billion, and its dominance over altcoins is 38.69%.
4. Bitcoin must reach this price level to escape second-longest bear market.
As the FTX-induced carnage in the cryptocurrency industry persists, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) continues its downfall pattern after it lost the support at $15,800, leading crypto experts to try and discern what it would take for the flagship digital asset to turn the tide.
One of them is the crypto technical analyst Matthew Hyland, who sees $20,200 as the price at which Bitcoin could finally break out of the bear market, which he earlier noted was “its second longest,” as he explained in a video tweeted on November 22.
Hyland, who has been tweeting about the 3-day supertrend indicator since last January, argued that:
“It flipped red almost a year ago now, December 3, 2021, so we’ve almost spent the last year in this red supertrend. It’s basically covered 90%+ of the bear market. The only spot missed is the area in November [2022], so the price for this to flip green now comes in at $20.2k approximately.”
Moving forward, he clarified that “this is because, whenever Bitcoin makes new lows, it lowers the price for this to flip green, so when we get back above that $20.2k level, this would actually flip green.”
The expert also referred to the 3-day moving average convergence divergence (MACD) indicator, for which he said “flipped earlier this week, about a week ago, and the last two times, it led to new bear market lows, and that happened once again – today we saw new bear market lows.”
Second-longest bear market
As Hyland reiterated:
“This is the longest bear market Bitcoin has been in since 2014. This is now longer than the 2018 bear market. The 2018 bear market only lasted a year to the day. This has been more than a year now.”
Meanwhile, the largest decentralized finance (DeFi) asset by market capitalization ($302.19 billion) is at press time changing hands at $15,727, down 2.27% on the day and 6.30% across the previous seven days, as per data retrieved by Finbold on November 22.
5. UK Lawmakers Vote to Widen Authorities’ Powers in Seizing Crypto-Related Property
The amendment builds upon a bill in Parliament that allows the government to seize cryptocurrencies tied to crime.
Lawmakers in the U.K. voted on Tuesday to grant authorities wider powers to seize property containing information that can help identify crypto assets related to crime.
The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, which is being debated in Parliament, already included rules to give authorities powers to seize cryptocurrencies tied to criminal activity.
New amendments accepted by lawmakers in the House of Commons (the lower chamber of Parliament) seek to give local law enforcement powers to also seize “crypto asset-related items,” which are items of property that contain or give access to information that could help assist in the seizure of targeted crypto assets.
“What this bill is doing is making sure that those assets that are held in crypto can be seized like other assets,” Tom Tugendhat, the minister of state responsible for crime and terrorism regulation, said during Tuesday’s line-by-line reading of the bill.
The same amendment makes it an offense to assault or resist an accredited financial investigator trying to seize a crypto-related item. Yet another amendment accepted on Tuesday to the Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments Act 1982 ensures courts across the U.K. can ask authorities to seize and freeze crypto tied to crime. Measures that will ensure seized assets aren't released until legal proceedings are concluded were also added to the bill.
6. Netherlands man arrested for allegedly laundering money with bitcoin.
A man in the Netherlands was arrested for allegedly laundering money using bitcoin. Prosecutors claim there were links to trading on the dark web.
The 42-year-old man, from the municipality of Midden-Groningen, was arrested on Nov. 16, according to a statement from the Fiscal Information and Investigation Service.
The investigation was started after the man used Bitcoin ATMs a few times. An investigation found that the man had been making large volumes of bitcoin trades through exchanges for a long time and that he owned a lot more bitcoin than he could have bought with his current income.
The man's house in Veendam was searched and his computer equipment and cash were seized.
The investigation was led by the Dutch Public Prosecutor’s Office.
7. Crypto Exchanges Lie That Your Funds Are Safe: Nouriel Roubini.
Renowned economist Nouriel Roubini, famous for predicting the collapse of the mortgage market in 2008-2009 and called "Dr. Doom" for that, remains a vocal crypto hater. This time, he has taken to Twitter to take a dig at crypto exchanges and the concept of "proof of reserves" offered by CZ of Binance. "Customer assets not safe in bankruptcy," here's why Roubini has taken a jab at crypto exchanges and the "proof-of-reserves" concept recently offered by CZ of Binance in response to FTX going bankrupt, along with its founder, former crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried. CZ called on crypto exchanges to provide proof of reserves to show the crypto community that exchanges are indeed keeping customers' crypto safe. Today, CZ announced that the subsidiary of Binance, CoinMarketCap, has launched a new dashboard feature that the shows PoR of various crypto exchanges.
This feature shows that the funds held by Binance surpass $78.7 billion worth of various cryptocurrencies.
Still, "Dr. Doom" Roubini believes that PoR is merely a gimmick employed by exchanges and crypto lenders to pretend that they are keeping their clients' money safe. In reality, Roubini insists, since funds are in the custody of a crypto exchange, this means the money is on its balance sheet. This means that if a platform goes insolvent, like FTX did, the funds are not safe. Finally, he stated that exchanges are, in fact, pretty much banks in this respect.
