The price of the flagship cryptocurrency Bitcoin ($BTC) has posted its worst quarterly performance in more than a decade, as in the second quarter of this year it lost around 58% of its value, going from $45,524 to just under $19,000 at the end of the three-month period.
According to data from CryptoCompare, as first reported by CNBC, bitcoin has posted its worst quarterly performance since 2011, when it lost 68.1% of its value in the third quarter of that year. At the time, the price of the cryptocurrency plunged after in June of 2011 its largest exchange, Mt. Gox, experienced its first hack. At the time, BTC even flash crashed down to $0.01.
Bitcoin is down nearly 40% for the month of June, which was its worst month dating back to 2010, when it became available on cryptocurrency exchanges.
Ethereum’s ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, lost over 69% of its value in the second quarter of this year, making it the worst quarter on record for the cryptocurrency ever since it was launched back in 2015.
The cryptocurrency space’s ongoing bear market has seen the price of BTC plunge from around $69,000 back in November 2021 to around $19,000 at the time of writing amid risk-off sentiment in the markets driven by inflation fears, interest rate hikes, and the war in Ukraine.
Cryptocurrency prices plunging also revealed several firms in the space were highly leveraged. In May, TerraUSD ($UST), an algorithmic stablecoin in the Terra network, collapsed along with its sister token LUNA, wiping billions from the market.
In June, embattled crypto lending firm Celsius Network froze withdrawals for customers over “extreme market conditions,” with rival lender Babel Finance and crypto exchange CoinFLEX freezing withdrawals shortly after.
Moreover, crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital has entered liquidation following a court order issued in the British Virgin Islands after creditors sued the fund for its inability to repay debts.
The cryptocurrency market downturn has forced some companies to lay off part of their staff, including Coinbase and BlockFi. Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research has stepped in to halt contagion with credit lines for BlockFi and crypto broker Voyager Digital.
A research analyst at CryptoCompare, Jacob Joseph, was quoted saying that previous boom and bust cycles saw BTC drop over 80%, which “suggests that e could be in for a further drawdown period if the current poor macroeconomic conditions continue to persist.”
According to the latest edition of CryptoCompare Research’s “Digital Asset Management Review“, in June, one Bitcoin ETP’s assets under management (AUM) managed to hit an all-time high despite the current crypto bear market.
The 21Shares Short Bitcoin ETP (SBTC), which “seeks to provide a -1x return on the performance of Bitcoin for a single day,” saw a 30-day return of 30.8% according to CryptoCompare, making it the third consecutive month where the product’s assets under management have risen, recording a new $16.5 million all-time high this month.
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