Bitcoin recovered slightly in Wednesday afternoon trading in Asia after hitting a year-low of US$17,604 this morning amid news of Binance’s takeover of the FTX exchange following speculation of solvency issues at FTX, although several coins extended their declines.
See related article: Coinbase says it has minimal exposure to FTX, downplays risk
Fast facts
- Bitcoin lost 6.63% in the past 24 hours to trade at US$18,410 at 2 p.m. in Hong Kong. It initially gained 6% following the announcement of Binance’s planned acquisition of FTX, but lost 12% over the following three hours amid concerns about FTX’s balance sheet and market contagion. Ether slumped 11.41% to US$18.79, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
- BNB, the native token of the blockchain operated by Binance, also fell but its losses were relatively minimal compared to the rest of the top 10 crypto, inching 1.81% lower to US$315.47.
- Solana led losses among the top 10, shedding 21.93% to US$20.46 – its lowest since April 2021. Dogecoin inched up from its sharp descent Wednesday morning, but was still 12.19% down for the past 24 hours to US$0.088.
- FTX’s native token FTT plummeted 71.27% to US$4.52, being worth US$15.73 24 hours earlier. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried announced the purchase overnight on Tuesday amid a liquidity crunch at FTX with the company’s debt accounting for 54% of its assets as of June 30.
- FTX reportedly sought financing of up to US$6 billion to fix its balance sheet woes, according to Semafor, which sparked market concern of a broader liquidity crunch similar to the multibillion-dollar collapse of the Terra-LUNA stablecoin project in May that bankrupted a raft of crypto firms exposed to Terra.
- The crypto market downturn spread to several stocks, with financial services company Robinhood losing 20% following Binance’s announcement of the acquisition. FTX currently holds over 56 million shares of Robinhood stock.
See related article: Binance buys FTX: Updates on what it means for the crypto industry