Market Wrap: Bitcoin Heads for Record Half-Year Loss of 59%
By Bradley Keoun, Jimmy He
BTC slipped below $19K for the fifth straight daily price decline. Stocks headed for their worst first half since the 1970s as a consumer spending slowdown stokes fresh recession concerns.
Bitcoin’s (BTC) price fell for a fifth straight day, heading toward the worst half-year loss on record. An adverse regulatory decision late Wednesday from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission squelched what little hope traders might have had of a quick rebound.
As of press time the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was changing hands just below $19,000, down 5.6% over the past 24 hours.
On the last day of the month, the one superlative in the market wasn’t much to brag about: The January-June stretch marked bitcoin’s worst six-month stretch on record, down 59%, based on data going back to the early 2010s.
Thursday’s leg down came after the SEC rejected the application by CoinDesk sister company Grayscale to convert its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a bitcoin-holding exchange-traded fund. Other dismal industry news continues to pile up: CoinFLEX withdrawals remain halted as the company continue talks over a “recovery token.”
And while $20,000 had been seen as a key pivot point for bitcoin’s price, analysts are now daring to discuss an even more pessimistic milestone.
“Bitcoin could be vulnerable to one more ugly plunge that could have many traders fearing a fall towards the $10,000 area,” Oanda senior market analyst Edward Moya wrote in an email.
Polygon’s MATIC token slid 10% and ether (ETH) lost 8.6%.
In traditional markets, a slowdown in consumer spending rattled investors and raised fears anew about a coming recession while the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was headed for its worst first-half performance since the 1970s.
Latest prices
●Bitcoin (BTC): $18,928 −7.0%
●Ether (ETH): $1,020 −8.9%
●S&P 500 daily close: 3,785.38 −0.9%
●Gold: $1,808 per troy ounce −0.3%
●Ten-year Treasury yield daily close: 2.97% −0.1
Altcoin roundup
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STEPN’s DEX surpasses Orca: The decentralized exchange (DEX) of move-to-earn game STEPN is now the largest DEX on Solana, according to a tweet from the anonymous founder of Solana-based lending platform Solend. The founder of the Solend protocol has also expressed interest in integrating STEPN’s tokens into its lending platform.
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Nansen to track Solana NFT data: The on-chain analytics platform is adding to its toolkit of non-fungible token (NFT) analytics, announcing that its long-awaited Solana integration is live. The platform’s data, which includes trade volumes, wallet analysis and minting dashboards, comes from the ecosystem’s two most popular marketplaces, Magic Eden and OpenSea.
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Harmony Horizon exploit linked to North Korea: The blockchain’s developers now have a “global manhunt” to track down the attackers behind last week’s $100 million exploit of its Horizon bridge, offering a $10 million bounty.
Other markets
Biggest Gainers
Biggest Losers
| Asset | Ticker | Returns | DACS Sector |
|---|---|---|---|
| Terra | LUNA | −26.3% | Smart Contract Platform |
| Polygon | MATIC | −11.3% | Smart Contract Platform |
| Avalanche | AVAX | −9.7% | Smart Contract Platform |
