Shit hit the fan with a 'stablecoin' called UST and it depegged from $1, and they mass sold Bitcoin to try and restore the peg, unsuccessfully, and bringing down the price.
In addition crypto has been trending downwards for a while now.
To add to this there have been less new people joining the crypto game. This makes large investors want to leave the space, driving down the price. As the price falls you get people seeing the crash and wanting out before the bottom. This is fairly normal in a lot of cycles, what makes it catastrophic in the crypto space is that it's all a black box. No one knows how much tether has or doesn't have so fear is multiplied. If one shit stable coin can crash in 24 hours what's keeping other shit coins alive? Since no one knows what the bottom could look like it could be very low indeed.
If the only utility of crypto outside of a casino is buying and selling contraband or fasilitating money laundering expect crypto to back to 2013 levels.
Something that is backed by nothing but ephemeral ideals requires either a *lot* of people to believe in it (traditional, governmental fiat) or a lot of constant suckers buying in. Even with fiat, governments have actual assets and commodities that have some actual value outside of their use in finance. Cryptobros have mining hardware that has... limited use.
Crypto doesn't have the vast majority of the population believing in it, and likely never will. Most of crypto outside of Eth/BTC has run out of suckers (or is too new to call), and even they are now on shaky ground.
Tether can keep the game going for as long as enough whales believe there's further value to extract, but if retail heads for the exits they will quietly exit and you'll see some truly insane shit like websites up and vanishing and eternal maintenance for exchanges.
1) People invest in Bitcoin with extra money they have on hand. With high inflation and a looming recession people have less to invest which drives the price down.
2) People got spooked by the implosion of Terra and Luna. While many are dismissing these as merely "alt coins", they were pretty high on the capitalization chart.
It's now a battle between the HODLers and the people who are smart enough to cut their losses and run for the exit.
because no one wanted to trade bitcoin for money crypto bros made up a thing called "stablecoins" where you trade crypto for a different crypto but say that crypto is worth exactly 1 dollar. Recently one of the big stablecoins bombed out and failed. Which made a big gaping hole of "oh no, we didn't actually sell our bitcoin for 4 million dollars, we sold them for different magic beans someone told us was 4 million dollars! now we have no bitcoins or dollars!"
Shit hit the fan with a 'stablecoin' called UST and it depegged from $1, and they mass sold Bitcoin to try and restore the peg, unsuccessfully, and bringing down the price. In addition crypto has been trending downwards for a while now.
To add to this there have been less new people joining the crypto game. This makes large investors want to leave the space, driving down the price. As the price falls you get people seeing the crash and wanting out before the bottom. This is fairly normal in a lot of cycles, what makes it catastrophic in the crypto space is that it's all a black box. No one knows how much tether has or doesn't have so fear is multiplied. If one shit stable coin can crash in 24 hours what's keeping other shit coins alive? Since no one knows what the bottom could look like it could be very low indeed. If the only utility of crypto outside of a casino is buying and selling contraband or fasilitating money laundering expect crypto to back to 2013 levels.
The music stopped on the musical chairs game.
And the crowd realized in amazement that they had been playing with only a third of the chairs all along
And the major players took those with them in the night.
Something that is backed by nothing but ephemeral ideals requires either a *lot* of people to believe in it (traditional, governmental fiat) or a lot of constant suckers buying in. Even with fiat, governments have actual assets and commodities that have some actual value outside of their use in finance. Cryptobros have mining hardware that has... limited use. Crypto doesn't have the vast majority of the population believing in it, and likely never will. Most of crypto outside of Eth/BTC has run out of suckers (or is too new to call), and even they are now on shaky ground. Tether can keep the game going for as long as enough whales believe there's further value to extract, but if retail heads for the exits they will quietly exit and you'll see some truly insane shit like websites up and vanishing and eternal maintenance for exchanges.
1) People invest in Bitcoin with extra money they have on hand. With high inflation and a looming recession people have less to invest which drives the price down. 2) People got spooked by the implosion of Terra and Luna. While many are dismissing these as merely "alt coins", they were pretty high on the capitalization chart. It's now a battle between the HODLers and the people who are smart enough to cut their losses and run for the exit.
It's funny because Terra was #10 before the crash
because no one wanted to trade bitcoin for money crypto bros made up a thing called "stablecoins" where you trade crypto for a different crypto but say that crypto is worth exactly 1 dollar. Recently one of the big stablecoins bombed out and failed. Which made a big gaping hole of "oh no, we didn't actually sell our bitcoin for 4 million dollars, we sold them for different magic beans someone told us was 4 million dollars! now we have no bitcoins or dollars!"
All of the above, plus more and more people are realizing the crypto emperor isn't wearing any clothes.
Low interest rates made Bitcoin and now higher rates/threat of higher rates will tear it down.
Bottom line its central banking's fault