As the American voting population heads into the mid-term elections this Tuesday, the crypto markets took a tumble.
But it likely wasn’t red and blue on the markets’ minds.
Rather, fears of another bout of market contagion have driven prices down amid speculation of liquidity problems in both arms of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire.
The world’s second-largest crypto exchange FTX and associated private equity firm Alameda Reasearch – both headed by Bankman-Fried – have become embroiled in controversy over their balance sheets.
The market has grown concerned about FTX's liquidity and FTX Token (FTT) has dipped 20% in the past 24 hours.
Bitcoin suffered a 5% dip, bringing the coin sharply below the key US$20,000 price point.
The next major support line is drawn at US$19,600.
Can bitcoin (BTC) withstand another bout of crypto contagion? – Source: currency.com
Ethereum also dipped around 5%, breaking below the US$1,500 price point to change hands just above the current support line of US$1,480.
Solana (SOL) and Dogecoin (DOGE) saw heavy double-digit losses while the recently launched Aptos (APYT) blockchain continued to fall by another 9.5%.
Among the other large-cap altcoins, Polkadot (DOT) and Polygon (MATIC) have managed to contain losses in the low single digits, the latter sustaining goodwill from recent news of a Meta Platforms integration.
In the decentralised finance (Defi) space, Uniswap (UNI) dipped 9% this morning, thus bringing its market value below US$5bn.
Market losses across other coins were less severe, but DeFi users have withdrawn large sums from all major protocols, resulting in 4% in total value locked being wiped from the DeFi ecosystem.
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