The CoinDesk Market Index, bitcoin and ether were all in the green. |
Nov. 22, 2022
What happened today in crypto markets
By Jocelyn Yang, CoinDesk Markets Reporter
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Happy Tuesday. Here’s what moved in the crypto markets today:
During FTX’s first bankruptcy hearing in Delaware on Tuesday, lawyers said that former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried ran the exchange like his own “personal fiefdom,” allowing executives to use customer funds to purchase luxury real estate.
Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao echoed doubts among some observers that Grayscale, operator of the biggest bitcoin trust, actually holds all the bitcoin it says it does, although he later deleted a tweet supporting his comments. (Grayscale is a CoinDesk sister company.)
Bitcoin rebounded to above $16,000 after hitting a two-year low from the previous day. Ether followed a similar trend, heading north Tuesday.
BTC/ETH prices per CoinDesk Indices; gold is COMEX spot price. Prices as of about 4 p.m. ET
Top Story
FTX lawyers at the company’s first bankruptcy hearing in Delaware detailed its “abrupt and difficult” collapse within the course of two weeks – shortly after CoinDesk’s Ian Allison reported that Alameda Research, a sister company of the FTX crypto exchange, held an unexpectedly large amount of FTT tokens issued by FTX itself.
“You have witnessed probably one of the most abrupt and difficult collapses in the history of corporate America,” James Bromley of Sullivan and Cromwell, an attorney representing FTX, explained during the company’s first bankruptcy hearing.
Bromley described the FTX empire – at its height valued at $32 billion – as the “personal fiefdom of Sam Bankman-Fried,” the former CEO of the exchange.
When Bankman-Fried reluctantly relinquished his position to FTX’s new CEO, former Enron cleanup man John Jay Ray III, it allowed those left at the company to, “for the first time, really see under the covers and recognize that the emperor had no clothes,” according to Bromley.
Though Bromley did not identify Bankman-Fried by name, he told the court that FTX “was in the control of a small group of inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals, and unfortunately, the evidence seems to indicate that some or all of them are also compromised individuals.”
There are over 100 different debtors tied to the FTX group that filed for bankruptcy, another attorney said.
Other News
Bitcoin (BTC)regained the $16,000 level Tuesday, coinciding with the news that Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management bought $1.5 million in Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was up 2.4% to $16,100 – after hitting a two-year low of $15,480 Monday. Despite Tuesday’s gain, Julius de Kempenaer, senior technical analyst at StockCharts.com, told CoinDesk that as the market is “in digestion,” it’s possible to see BTC drop further – possibly to the $12,500 level before the end of the year.
Several altcoins also had a strong performance: Ether (ETH) followed a similar trajectory as BTC, and was up roughly 2.6% to $1,120. Solana’s SOL token was up 3% to nearly $12. CRV, the governance token of decentralized exchange Curve, was the top performer of the day among the basket of digital assets in the CoinDesk Market Index as the token jumped over 25%, reversing its sharp drop earlier in the day.
Equity markets across the board turned green: U.S. stocks edged up ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, with the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index up 1.3% at closing. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) gained 1.1%, while Nasdaq was up 1.3%.
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Market Analysis: Investors See Few Encouraging Signs
Developed by Julius de Kempanaer, RRGs allow users to view asset performance in four distinct quadrants: leading – high relative performance and momentum; weakening – strong relative performance and slowing momentum; lagging – weak relative performance and momentum; improving – weak relative performance but increasing momentum.
In orderly markets, assets tend to move through each quadrant sequentially.
A strategy often employed in using RRG’s is to identify assets moving into the improving quadrant, with the expectation that in short order it will begin leading the benchmark.
If using RRGs in isolation, there doesn’t appear to be much opportunity in the above set, as six of the eight assets are either lagging the SPX or weakening versus the SPX. OKB and TWT are currently leading, but TWT’s status is driven by extremely recent price activity.
Generation C hosts Avery Akkineni of Vayner 3 and Sam Ewen from CoinDesk share how brands and marketers are using Web3 to experiment and potentially transform their businesses. Tune in to explore how Fortune 500 companies and new start-ups alike are coming to the blockchain to generate attention, gain customers and create value for their bottom line and their communities. Listen now.
Altcoin Roundup
CRV, the governance token of decentralized exchange Curve, has turned volatile amid a surge in the number of coins held at centralized trading platforms. The token dropped 17% to a two-year low of 40 cents early Tuesday before erasing the losses with a V-shaped recovery.
Saudi Arabia’s non-fungible token (NFT) collection soared after an unexpected soccer win against Argentina in the FIFA World Cup.Sales for the Saudi Arabia-themed NFT collection called “The Saudis” increased 387% on Tuesday. Argentina’s fan token, in contrast, dropped 21% over the past 24 hours and was trading at $5.44 at the time of publication.
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Listen 🎧: Today’s “CoinDesk Markets Daily” podcast discusses the latest market movements and a look at some warning signs we missed from FTX’s collapse.
Disclaimer: The information presented in this message is intended as a news item that provides a brief summary of various events and developments that affect, or that might in the future affect, the value of one or more of the cryptocurrencies described above. The information contained in this message, and any information liked through the items contained herein, is not intended to provide sufficient information to form the basis for an investment decision. The information presented herein is accurate only as of its date, and it was not prepared by a research analyst or other investment professional. You should seek additional information regarding the merits and risks of investing in any cryptocurrency before deciding to purchase or sell any such instruments.
