Crypto investors were panicking on Thursday as bitcoin and other digital coins continued to plummet.
Victims of the bloodbath — which comes amid a broader stock market rout — range from the billionaire crypto titans who run leading marketplaces such as Coinbase and Binance to lowly retail investors who have poured their life savings into cryptocurrencies.
“I lost over 450k usd, I cannot pay the bank,” reads one of the top posts on the Reddit forum for Terra Luna, a cryptocurrency that has lost more than 99% of its value over the past week. “I will lose my home soon. I’ll become homeless. suicide is the only way out for me.”
“My ex-colleague attempted suicide,” reads another top post on the forum. “He basically moved all of his savings to crypto in 2021 and LUNA was a massive player in his portfolio.”
While Luna’s collapse is the most spectacular, other cryptocurrencies are also in freefall. Bitcoin was trading around $29,000 midday Thursday, down 17.7% over the past week and nearly 60% lower than its all-time high of $69,000 in November 2021. Other major cryptocurrencies including ethereum and solana are now worth fractions of their all-time highs.
The entire cryptocurrency market now has a market capitalization of $1.2 trillion — less than half of the $2.9 trillion it was worth in November, according to CoinMarketCap data.
“There’s a lot of folks out there who have taken some real bruises.” said Garrick Hileman, research chief at Blockchain.com. “In crypto, the strong survive and the weak get flushed.”
The ongoing rout gives fuel to detractors who have long argued that the decentralized digital currencies were a frothy fad fueled by low interest rates and pandemic-era stimulus checks.
