Over the last few weeks, the cryptocurrency market has been rocked by extreme volatility. There has been a steep decline in the price of digital assets. Such has been the meltdown in that the entire market cap has fallen under $1 trillion, which surpassed the $3 trillion mark at the peak of the bull cycle.
Being a nascent market means high volatility is a common phenomenon at this stage of growth. That said, this volatility has made crypto so attractive to investors and speculators. However, volatility doesn’t always mean just a significant upside but also a remarkable downside.
And that’s what we are seeing in this fourth crypto cycle, so all this carnage is not unprecedented. In fact, a 70% to 80% drop in Bitcoin and Ether prices from their all-time highs can be seen as a golden ‘buy the blood’ opportunity to plan for the future with a focus on research and only investing what you can afford to lose.
However, we also witnessed this time that the significant drawdown in the crypto prices was exacerbated by the lack of proper risk management practices adopted by some of the biggest names in the industry.
Extreme Market Conditions
One of the biggest centralized lenders in the crypto space, Celsius Network, was among this torrent of bad news as it abruptly froze customer withdrawals, swaps, and transfers between accounts due to what it said were “extreme market conditions.”
This pause in withdrawals resulted in more volatility and raised concerns about Celsius’ solvency. It was a liquidity issue, according to the experts, a classic banking problem.
Just late last year, Celsius Network raised $400 million in a Series B funding round at a valuation of $3.5 billion. Back in October, the crypto lender had $25 billion in assets from more than 1.7 million users, which fell to around $11.8 billion as of last month.
Besides spooking investors and the market, this is catching the attention of the administration and lawmakers during times of economic uncertainty, including high inflation and global market instability.
State securities regulators in Washington, Alabama, Texas, Kentucky, and New Jersey are now investigating Celsius Network’s decision to suspend customer redemptions this week.
It is expected the proposed regulations to regulate stablecoins by the President Working Group could extend to the entire crypto space in order to “mitigate the risks of these assets.”
The PWG report calls for federal regulatory oversight, restricting…
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