Today’s crypto headlines are dominated by three stories: Celsius freezing assets, Coinbase laying off employees, and Bitcoin’s alarming price.
The crypto market is experiencing a new meltdown in mid-June, as prices continue to decline and businesses struggle to stay afloat. In mid-May, the fall of Terra Luna caused the first crypto meltdown. This time, it’s a combination of sky-high inflation and shattered confidence in cryptocurrency following last month’s crash.
Following the conclusion of the US Federal Reserve meeting on June 15, the focus of crypto news in the following days will most likely be on interest rate hikes.
‘Extreme market conditions’ have caused assets to freeze.
First, in May, the Anchor Protocol savings account with a 19 percent annual percentage yield (APY) crashed along with the Terra Luna disaster.
Only a month later, Celsius’s 18.63 percent annual percentage yield savings account is in jeopardy. On Monday, the popular crypto lending and staking site suspended all withdrawals, swaps, and account transfers. The platform blamed the freezing on ‘extreme market conditions,’ according to a message to investors.
Celsius is thought to be in charge of around $11.5 billion in assets. This is less than the $40 billion spent in Terra Luna (now Luna Classic) and UST (now USTC) prior to the network’s collapse, but it’s still a substantial sum to put at risk.
Celsius was founded in 2017 and offers low-interest loans with significant payouts to its subscribers. Celsius has offices in New Jersey, London, Tel Aviv, Cyprus, and Serbia, and is offered in over 100 countries.
Coinbase has laid off 18% of its workers.
In an email to staff on Tuesday, Coinbase revealed that 18 percent of its workforce would be laid off.
Coinbase employs over 5,000 full-time employees, which means around 1,100 people are at risk of losing their employment at the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume in the United States. Markets ‘look to be approaching a recession,’ according to the email, which might lead to another ‘crypto winter.’
In an email, Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong stated that the company has to ‘prepare for the worst’ in order to keep the business running in any situation.
It comes after Coinbase announced plans to hire 2,000 people at the start of the year. Coinbase’s stock has dropped 79 percent this year and 85 percent from its all-time high due to a hiring halt and falling crypto prices.
Bitcoin’s price is hovering around $20,000 at the moment.
In the morning of June 15, the Bitcoin price plummeted to a new historical low of $20,180.
This is the lowest Bitcoin price since December 2020, and it’s down 71 percent from the all-time high in November of last year. After threatening to go below $20,000, Bitcoin immediately recovered to above $21,000, but volatile market circumstances may result in more losses in the days ahead.
Bitcoin’s market capitalization was over $1 trillion earlier this year, but it has since dropped to $400 billion.
The trading volume of EverGrow Coin has increased by more than 60%.
In recent days, the trading volume of stablecoin BUSD has surged dramatically.
While other cryptocurrencies were collapsing on June 13, BUSD saw a 100 percent increase in trading volume from $5.7 billion to $11.5 billion in a single day. Following the fall of Terra Luna and the plummeting market values of other top cryptocurrencies, BUSD has firmly established itself in the crypto top ten.
After trading Cardano and XRP, BUSD is now ranked 6th in the crypto market cap rankings.
Part of the reason for EverGrow Coin’s current price spike is the strength of the US dollar amid crypto crashes. Over the last 24 hours, the price of EverGrow Coin has increased by 12% to $0.0000001764.
EverGrow Coin is the most popular reflection, paying out BUSD on a daily basis. Since the debut of the EverGrow Coin in September of last year, investors have received more than $37 million BUSD in rewards. EverGrow Coin has a transaction fee of 14%, with 8% of the fee being instantaneously redistributed as BUSD.
