Gadzooks! Crypto takes a tumble

It sure is Solana’s time to shine. SOL has crested 40% in the past 24 hours, a towering pine tree in a forest of crimson.

The rally comes as decentralized exchanges (DEXs) become fed up with Ethereum congestion/cost, actionably so.

SushiSwap is the latest DEX to consider expanding to the Solana blockchain. SUSHI holders will consider integrating the liquidity platform with Raydium, an automated market-maker (AMM) with an on-chain order book that runs on Solana.

High transaction fees are among the biggest challenges facing the DeFi industry but can be overcome without entirely sacrificing decentralization, Solana’s founder Anatoly Yakovenko told Cryptonews.com.

It’s been a wacky past couple of days for Bitcoin, which only very recently looked like it would blow past $60K only to be holding tenuously to $46,600 as of 8 a.m. (EST). BTC did dart higher back toward $50,000 by about 9 a.m.

Fickle early morning oscillation follows a nerve-fraying ride that put $58K in the rear-view mirror by way of a collapse of nearly 20%. Crammed in that hole as it was being dug (twice) came an intra-day volley between anxious implosion, with BTC falling as low as $45.5K, and reassuring retracement, with BTC actually going back above $50K – although that return to glory didn't last long.

And Elon Musk has not been helping.

Meanwhile, on the big exchanges, traders were getting blown out of overleveraged positions, with some $6 billion worth of forced liquidations, according to Bybt, an aggregator of crypto exchange data. Monday, Feb. 22 was, Bybt said, “the craziest day in Bitcoin Futures history.”

Early on Feb. 23, the crypto market collectively shed 20% worth of market cap (The Block).

Ethereum fell below $1,400. An eye blink ago, ETH was closing in on $2K.

 "The heat map is a testimony of the bloodbath," Crypto Potato said.

On Monday, Crypto.com (CRO) rocketed 57% to $0.22 on news that the exchange/payments tool provider would burn some 70 billion CRO in the coming week.

CRO climbed even when BTC began to buckle. But then, yes, eventually, CRO made a harrowing cliff dive to fourteen cents.

As of Tuesday morning at 7:30 a.m. (EST) CRO was down 48% over that 24-hour period.

Crypto.com's mainnet launch won't go completely unnoticed, even if more crypto comeuppance were to come.

CRO's torch job is being touted as the “largest token burn” in history and is viewed as a major step toward a fully decentralized reboot.

Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates isn't bullish on Bitcoin; nor does he have much against it.

And better yet, Gates, in an interview with Bloomberg, admitted crypto has proven useful since the start of the pandemic.

The Gates Foundation has used digital currency to enable governments to distribute relief funds to their citizens.