What’s the catalyst behind the crypto crash? – TechCrunch
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Trying to untangle what’s going on in web3 markets
The web3 market is a mess.
There’s enough going on that it will take us a moment to unpack the situation this morning, but leading indicators of sentiment in the blockchain ecosystem are sufficiently nasty as to set the stage: Bitcoin is off around 13% in the last 24 hours to $23,436; ETH is off around 15% over the same time frame to $1,219; Solana’s token is off approximately 15% in the last day to $26.75.
The three tokens are off roughly 26%, 36% and 39%, respectively, over the last week.
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The biggest driver of concern this morning appears to be a crisis at Celsius Networks, which raised a huge chunk of venture capital last year and today halted withdrawals after its token crashed.
This doesn’t mean that there is no money flowing in the startup world — even some less tech-focused ideas are busy raising big checks, as TechCrunch noted earlier today. But in the blockchain domain, what’s going on? Let’s take a minute to explore that very question from a few different angles.
What the heck is going on?
While I am not the TechCrunch+ crypto expert — that title rests with recent hire Jacquelyn Melinek — I have put together a list of issues as I see them that are currently tripping up the web3 market, which is inclusive of everything from cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance to non-fungible tokens. They are, loosely:
