This week in coins. Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.
Welcome back to our weekly recap of crypto market moves over the past seven days.
Just when the industry was beginning to think Crypto Winter had passed, the sudden cinematic collapse of crypto exchange FTX this week sent prices spiraling down across the board.
Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) crashed in sync, both losing about 20% of their value over the past seven days, according to CoinGecko data.
The world’s top cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) currently trades at $16,872, a price not seen since November 2020 when it began its pandemic-fueled bull run.
The second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Ethereum (ETH), is today trading at around $1,274—a bottom that last occurred in early July.
The steepest loss in the top fifty cryptocurrencies was felt by Solana (SOL) holders, who found their pot shrank by 47% in the last seven days. SOL is changing hands at $16.26.
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was one of Solana’s earliest backers and also owned a large stash of SOL through his other crypto company, Alameda Research. SOL was the second-largest coin holding of the disgraced hedge fund.
Broadly speaking, double-digit percentile losses were extremely common this week. XRP and privacy coin Monero (XMR) both posted similar losses to the two market leaders, with XRP starting the weekend at 38 cents and Monero trading for $127.
Steep losses were also felt by Dogecoin (DOGE) holders, who are down 31% to $0.084633; Avalanche (AVAX) crashed 23% to $13.96, and Algorand (ALGO) dropped 18% to 13 cents.
FTX total meltdown
Nobody saw this one coming—but they probably should have.
Back at the start of summer, when Terra’s collapse triggered a wave of bankruptcies, Sam Bankman-Fried was the first industry billionaire to open his purse strings to offer bailouts left, right and center.
On paper, at the time, he looked like he could afford it.
At the height of his wealth in March, Bankman-Fried was worth an…
