Bitcoin and ether prices plummeted during East Asia’s morning trading hours. Bitcoin hit a low of $22,277, while ether dipped to $1,563. The sharp decline in prices caused a domino effect throughout the crypto market, with most major coins seeing double-digit percentage drops.
The cryptocurrency market started Friday with a major plunge. Bitcoin and ether, the two largest cryptocurrencies by market cap, both dropped more than 5%. This was in response to the news that Silvergate Bank, a crypto-friendly bank, saw its stock plummet 58% during U.S. trading on Thursday. Most of the other 10 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap saw declines similar to BTC and ETH’s.
Nick Ruck of ContentFi, a Web3 venture studio, commented on the recent volatility in the markets, citing Silvergate Bank’s recent issues and the release of Mt. Gox’s bitcoin as contributing factors.
The sell-off on Coinbase caused connectivity issues on the platform. Other major crypto exchanges, including Binance, Bitfinex, Kucoin, OKX and Kraken, did not experience the same issues.
Bitcoin’s price plummeted to a new intraday low of $22,020 as Asia trading hours began, after remaining roughly steady at $23,500 for most of the past day. It appeared to rebound slightly, recovering to just under $22,400 following its plunge.
Ether prices have been bouncing around the $1,650 mark for the past day with limited change, but saw a similar pattern as bitcoin, falling to $1,550.
Bitcoin’s market cap declined by over $20 billion to $431.9 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. This brings the total crypto market cap down to $1.07 trillion. In the last four hours, open interest in bitcoin futures was down 8.8%, according to Coinglass. Ether’s open interest was down 5%.