Bitcoin collapses, altcoins follow

It almost made you forget the awful toll we've witnessed – in crypto, this morning – but there, that shining city on the hill, why that’s XRP, the price of which has risen 6% in the past 24 hours even as most everything else collapses around it.

As of Monday at 9 a.m. (EST), Bitcoin (-7%) had lost $5,000 worth of its value, dragging most altcoins down with it, and obscuring the short-lived excitement surrounding a rambunctious weekend. What a blast. On Sunday, BTC crossed $58K for the first time, on the way to a new a new all-time high (about $58,350) and, for one singular, albeit fleeting head-scratcher of a moment in time, BTC notched triple-digit percentage gains on a 2021 not yet two-months old.

In mere hours, almost violently, that triple-digit-domain was relinquished. So no, it is not more than 100% YTD for BTC which for now will have to settle with still being up nearly 100% YTD.

Last year, over 12 months, BTC rose 305%.

With the largest crypto enduring its steepest one-day decline in about a month, a bevy of altcoins not unexpectedly have followed suit. Ethereum's price shed 8% as of Monday at 8 a.m. (EST). Cardano (ADA) was down a double-digit percentage figure (-11%) and a slew of DeFi tokens are plummeting.

A fast, wide-swath perusal of the Top 100 coins by cap reveals numerous middle-of-the-pack assets have shed 11-14% over one day, like Ren (REN) and PancakwSwap (CAKE). One coin has to be crowned king of pain. But who would it be? Venus (XVS) if you will ... the token tied to the $2 billion-in-TVL Venus Protocol, a Binance-Smart-Chain-run stablecoin platform, has pulled back a painful 18% in 24 hours.

The altcoin market happily lives/dies with BTC, right now wounded and bleeding.

Trading data shows not so much a thousand tiny cuts but a swift, brutal cutlass swipe to the gut, with $1.5 billion worth of liquidated BTC positions across the major exchanges over the past 24 hours (Crypto Potato).

Talk about a block chain: Carolina Panthers' offensive lineman Russell Okung stubbornly insisted he get half of his $13 million annual salary paid in Bitcoin. A twitter campaign, his persistence, some creative management, payroll technology, it all led to his team saying “okay fine” to the demand. The 32-year-old Okung is now considered, by those taking digital money into consideration, to be among the five highest-paid players in the National Football League.

"Money is more than currency," Okung said in a statement. "It's power."

He also decried the current economic system as "corrupt" and "manipulated." On Feb. 18, Okung tweeted a victory lap, adding that he was not selling his BTC.

The NFL and its players' union are right now in the midst of setting a cap on the total amount of U.S. dollars any given team can spend on player salaries, so with the Panthers/Okung as the trickle, a river of next-movers could soon deluge the game.