Crypto pummeled

A few stablecoins have tinted inconsequentially green over the past few hours. And that’s about it.

Turning to traditional securities, U.S. treasury yields ticked higher, going above 1.7%.

Decentralized digital money is being put to the test. It comes (perhaps ironically, perhaps not) amidst intensifying focus on central bank tightening, and with the biggest and best-loved technology stocks under duress.

This sharp, sudden, risk-asset roiling comes after the release yesterday afternoon of the official minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s December meeting at which it was made that much more abundantly clear that supportive monetary policy no longer resided in the Fed’s bag of tricks.

Like a frightening river of molten lava cascading over a hillside enclave, crypto charts have become a bright crimson deluge no one wants to mess with.

Bitcoin and Ethereum took a beating in the Wednesday/Thursday sell-off with the latter plummeting by 13%. Big boy BTC fell to below $43K for the first time in three months, having shed 7% in 24 hours as of 7 a.m. (EST).

Play-to-earn tokens were torched – Axie Infinity (AXS) down 18%, rivals ENJ, SAND, MANA all in the same leaky canoe – while decentralized finance (DeFi) blockchains got blasted up and down the line. Even as Solana (SOL) announced that it raised $5 million for its DeFi protocol Exotic Markets (EXO) yesterday, hawkish Fed minutes manifested (not to mention news of a mining ban in Kazakhstan) and the bottom fell out, harrowingly so, across the crypto landscape, and with no project left unscathed. SOL declined 14% over the past 24 hours. Avalanche (AVAX), which per DeFi Llama has $11 billion in total value locked (TVL), putting it firmly into the Top 5 DeFi projects as ranked by TVL, nevertheless just fell 13%.

Yesterday's high-flyer, Chainlink (LINK)? It held, all things considered, only down 6% and still green over seven days.

Cardano (ADA), which spent the second half of last month jaunting from $1.20 toward $1.60, is back to mid-December levels, dropping 8% in 24 hours.

Range bound for the holidays, Bitcoin has now reacquainted itself with wicked-harsh volatility – smashing through its load-bearing floor at $46K, tumbling unthinkably toward $42K – much to the delight of down-shouters on Twitter.

CryptoWhale, always a vociferous BTC bear, months ago forecast sub-$10K BTC – and wasted no time reminding 400,000 Twitter followers to not forget it.

Peter Schiff joined in the nay-riffing. "If it breaks $30K it could crash to $15K," he chirped (Cointelegraph).

Long-positioned traders were of course glum, stone-obliterated, with hundreds of millions of dollars of BTC-pegged futures (mostly bets on upward trajectories) snap-liquidated throughout the night and into the morning (CoinDesk).

“Honestly surprised we didn’t see more of a flush today," popular on-chain analyst Will Clemente tweeted with respect to BTC spot price lows in the wake of a tidal wave of liquidations.

Most analysts heading into Wednesday saw a crypto shake-up as being overdue after several placid weeks.

“All I know for sure," Clemente added, "is that this party is just getting started.”