Over the weekend, global cryptocurrencies dropped after the FTX cryptocurrency exchange collapsed. Several hacker and threat groups took advantage of the FTX crash and looted cryptocurrencies worth half-a-billion dollars from the exchange. The authorities tracking the stolen amount are looking for individuals associated with the loot while some big crypto coins are crashing down.
The freefall began when the cryptocurrency trading and exchange group announced bankruptcy proceedings and that its former billionaire CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried tendered his resignation. Subsequently, the company flagged the unauthorised transactions.
Beginning of FTX Crash
Last week, Binance announced its withdrawal from the FTX rescue agreement, a day after it was announced, citing results of corporate due diligence. Sequoia Capital also deducted its whole $214 million investment in FTX from its book value. The exchange was facing a liquidity crisis, which blew up last week, taking down the company which was worth $32 billion at one point.
Since the news about the fall of FTX became a hot topic, most cryptocurrencies declined over the weekend. Due to persistent selling, Bitcoin and Ethereum are still trading in the red after a week of volatility.
According to reports, after the exchange service crashed, the price of Bitcoin, the biggest and most well-known cryptocurrency, is trading roughly 5% lower at $16,103. Other popular cryptocurrencies like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu also plummeted, and the market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies fell below $1 trillion on November 14.
Cryptocurrencies take the fall for the FTX collapse
The majority of popular cryptocurrencies have fallen up to 5%-10% from last week. Bitcoin managed to regain some value and crossed $16,000. As for Ethereum, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, lost the value of its native currency Ether by nearly 6%. Shiba Inu was also down more than 10% to $0.000008, while Dogecoin was trading around 10% lower at $0.08 on 14 November.
The prices of Binance USD, Avalanche, Solana, Tether, XRP, Terra, Tron, Litecoin, ApeCoin, Polygon, Cardano, Stellar, Chainlink, Uniswap and Polkadot have been trading at lower levels during the past 24 hours.
The value of cryptocurrency assets has fallen precipitously this year, and FTX is the latest cryptocurrency company to go bust. The fall of FTX CEO Sam Bankman Fried’s empire has damaged investor trust in digital assets, allege crypto-sceptics, pointing out that the cryptocurrency market has lost roughly $200 billion in value just in the last week.