Bitcoin Falls Below $16,000

Following the collapse of popular crypto exchange FTX, Bitcoin fell 12% to just under $16,000, hitting a low not seen since November 2020. "It reached its all-time high of $68,982.20 one year ago Thursday," notes CNBC. From the report: Cryptocurrencies extended their slide for a second day Wednesday as the market absorbed the potential collapse of popular crypto exchange FTX. Prices were pressured to start the day and plunged by late afternoon as Binance, the largest global exchange by volume, abandoned plans to acquire Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX after a due diligence exam and recent reports of mishandled customer funds and alleged U.S. agency investigations of FTX. The Bankman-Fried empire quickly unraveled after a report last week showed a large part of the balance sheet at Alameda Research, the trading company where Bankman-Fried was also CEO, had been concentrated in FTX Token (FTT), the native token of the FTX trading platform. After some light sparring on Twitter with Bankman-Fried, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced his company was offloading the FTT on its books, leading to a run on the popular FTX exchange and a liquidity crisis. FTX counts some of the biggest names in finance -- including SoftBank, BlackRock, Tiger Global, Thoma Bravo, Sequoia and Paradigm -- among its investors. "Given the public-facing nature of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and the size of FTX, we believe that the week's events could cause some loss of consumer confidence in the crypto industry, beyond that seen in the aftermath of the 3AC, Celsius, and Voyager events that took place earlier this year," especially if panic spreads and crypto prices keep dropping, KBW analysts said in a note Tuesday. "It may take time for customers to regain trust in the industry, broadly speaking (and we think regulation could help this)."

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