Bitcoin and Ether prices rose in Tuesday morning trading in Asia, along with all top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
Market sentiment improved overnight on the back of comments by Binance Global Inc. and others to set up funds for crypto projects damaged by the bankruptcy on Friday of the FTX.com exchange.
The sharp slide in prices over the past week – Bitcoin was still down 15% for the past seven days – also saw buying from investors taking advantage of the slump.
Binance Chief Executive Officer Changpeng Zhao on Monday said he would establish a crypto industry “recovery fund” when he spoke at the B20 Summit in Indonesia, a conference running alongside the G20 summit that starts Tuesday. He didn’t disclose what the size of the fund will be in U.S. dollar terms.
Cryptocurrency exchange Bitget also said it will establish a so-called “Builders’ Fund” of US$5 million for companies and others “distressed” by the FTX collapse.
“The market has responded very positively to the announcement” of potential aid, said Marcus Sotiriou, an analyst at the publicly listed digital asset broker GlobalBlock, in commentary shared with Forkast. He added that some investors have been bargain-hunting as prices slumped over the past week.
“Many Bitcoin whales have chosen this time of panic to accumulate, as the number of addresses with more than 10,000 Bitcoin has exploded over the past week or so,” he said, citing data from GlassNode.
The native token of the Singapore-based exchange Crypto.com also gained on Tuesday. The token, CRO, fell to a near two-year low of US$0.05629 on Monday amid reports of a US$400 million erroneous Ether withdrawal from the exchange.
Crypto.com Chief Executive Officer Kris Marszalek held a live Q&A on Monday and said the transfer was an error but the funds were never at risk because they were sent to “whitelisted and pre-approved” addresses.
CRO gained 23.91% to US$0.071 in the 24 hours to 10:30 a.m. in Hong Kong, according to CoinMarketCap.
Sotiriou said the exchange chose a poor time to make such a mistake.
“Crypto.com making an accidental transfer of $400 million at a time when there is extreme fear in the market around the solvency of exchanges is not a good look for the exchange,” said Sotiriou.
Following from the Q&A Marszalek also tweeted overnight: “Withdrawals are being processed as usual. No FUD [fear and doubt] please.”
In late afternoon trading as of 4 p.m. Hong Kong time, Bitcoin was up 0.26% to US$16,836, while Ether was up 0.88% to US$1,266.
Solana, one of the heaviest hit leading tokens in the fallout from the FTX collapse, was down 0.13% to US$14.49. XRP was up 10.28% to US$0.38, and CRO was up 23.56% to US$0.071.
Once the fourth-ranked token by market cap, Solana made up a large portion of the reserves held by FTX’s brokerage arm Alameda Research, which the brokerage sold off in an attempt to stabilize FTX last week.
XRP rose amid speculation of a favorable outcome for Ripple Labs, the issuer of XRP, in its lawsuit with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commision.
