Crypto crash – latest: Bitcoin withdraws still blocked by Binance after huge market collapse

After briefly rising to a value of over $22,000, bitcoin has dropped below the value again in the last hour.

The leading cryptocurrency is currently fluctuating around this mark.

It is still down by about 15 per cent in the last day and by over 25 per cent compared to its value last week.

The overall crypto market is down by about 12 per cent in the last day, and is valued at about $924 bn amid the risk of mass liquidations.

El Salvador’s Finance Minister Alejandro Zelaya said on Monday that the current crypto market crash poses an “extremely minimal” fiscal risk to the South American nation.

“When they tell me that the fiscal risk for El Salvador because of Bitcoin is really high, the only thing I can do is smile. The fiscal risk is extremely minimal,” Mr Zelaya said at a press conference, according to Reuters.

The country has purchased 2,301 Bitcoin, which are currently worth about $51M at the time of publishing – about 50 percent of the $105.6M that the country has invested in the cryptocurrency.

Mr Zelaya said the country’s bitcoin portfolio had lost some $40M in value, citing an earlier estimate from Deutsche Welles.

“Forty million dollars does not even represent 0.5% of our national general budget,” he said.

Coinbase shares were down more than 11 per cent on Monday amid the latest crypto market crash.

This appears to be linked to bitcoin trading at its lowest levels since December 2020, and the overall crypto market value dropping below the $1 tn mark.

Shares of the crypto trading platform were already down 76 percent over the last year, and the company had announced a hiring freeze and cancelled accepted job offers.

Cryptocurrency companies including Crypto.com and BlockFi have announced they’ve laid off employees amid the recent crypto market crash and a bearish industry.

Kris Marszalek of Crypto.com said the company is making adjustments to the market conditions by “making targeted reductions of approximately 260 or 5% of our corporate workforce.”

“We will continue to evaluate how to best optimize our resources to position ourselves as the strongest builders during the down cycle to become the biggest winners during the next bull run,” he tweeted.

BlockFi founders Zac Prince and Floria Marquez also said in a blog post on Monday that the reason the company laid off employees was due to the crypto crash.

Bitcoin is down by about 16 per cent in the last day and is inching closer to the $21,000 mark.

The world’s leading cryptocurrency has sunk in value by nearly 27 per cent compared to its price last week amid the latest crypto market crash.

Other leading cryptocurrencies, including ethereum, and dogecoin have also dropped in value by around 15 per cent in the last 24 hours.

Solana and cardano are also down by over 5 to 8 per cent in the last day.

The overall crypto market is continuing its downward trend, and is currently close to a value of $900M, sinking by over 12 per cent in the last 24 hours.

El Salvador currently has 2,301 Bitcoin, worth about $50 million at the time of publishing.

This is about 50 percent of the $105.6 million that the country’s president Nayib Bukele invested.

The country has bought the dip several times in the past.

In October 2021, it bought 420 bitcoins, paying the highest price per bitcoin. Then on 9 May, Mr Bukele again “bought the dip” and bought 500 bitcoins for over $30,700 each.

But amid the latest crypto market crash, with bitcoin’s price inching closer to the $21,000 mark, it remains to be seen if the country would keep hodling its bitcoin assets to recoup some of the money lost.

Crypto market analysts are divided over whether we’re nearing the end of the bear market, or still firmly in the middle of it.

With more than 60 per cent losses for bitcoin since its November 2021 price peak, some believe it could still rival the 80 per cent+ losses seen during the market corrections of 2013 and 2017.

After dropping below $1 trillion today for the first time since 2020, we’ve asked analysts which way they think the crypto market is heading from here.

You can read all about it here:

We will be continuing our updates tomorrow – stay tuned!

Bitcoin’s volitlity at this time is unlikely to sweeten it to the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK, which is looking to regulate crypto more.

Nikhil Rathi, head of the organisation, said that crypto is “a vector for serious organized crime and money laundering” and told a Treasury Committee that “anyone who invests in them must be ready to lose all their money.”

In the past two years, Bloomberg notes, the FCA has all-but-banned Binance in the UK and set high standards for doing busines sin the country so that most digital currency companies can’t operate.

“In the US we have an alphabet soup of regulators,” Eugene Soltes, a Harvard Business School professor who studies regulation, says. “We’re trying to figure out still who is the regulator, not how we should regulate them. The FCA already has one up.”

“We could be facing even more severe losses moving forward. Economic growth is clearly slowing, and reports already suggest the U.S. could see a recession in the next year,” said Manuel Ortiz-Olave, co-founder at equity tokens firm Brickken, in an email to CoinDesk.

“Higher inflation will continue forcing higher interest rates, and higher interest rates are also negative for economic growth.”

He continued: “Some of the most important companies in the world like Apple, Microsoft or Nike have already reported slowdowns in sales, and Tesla has indicated that layoffs will come soon. These are clearly negative headlines, which combined with higher food and fuel prices, make people be careful about their savings.”