Another Crypto Value Destruction Day

Premarket trading Monday had the three top U.S. equity indexes picking up where they left off on Friday afternoon. All three traded lower, but only by about half as much as their closing prices Friday.

The cryptocurrency markets are a different story. Bitcoin (BTC) was trading down almost 14% at around $23,600, ethereum was down 18.2% at just under $1,200, and Binance Coin (BNB) was down about 14.6% at $220. These prices reflect declines over the past 24 hours. Recall that crypto markets never sleep.

Of the 10 largest (by market cap) cryptocurrencies, only Binance USD and USD Coin, both stablecoins, were trading higher. By less than 0.1% in both cases.

Last Friday’s consumer price index report sank crypto prices just as it sank equities prices. Then, late Sunday, crypto lending service Celsius announced on its blog that it is temporarily halting all withdrawals, swaps, and transfers between accounts due to “extreme market conditions.” The company took this step in order “to put Celsius in a better position to honor, over time, its withdrawal obligations.”

Celsius operates like a consumer bank, taking deposits from some customers, lending to others and profiting from the difference in the interest rate it pays the former and that it collects from the latter. The big difference is that it does not have federal deposit insurance, and any crypto assets it claims are subject to crypto price movements.

Colin Wu (@WuBlockchain) has been watching Celsius’s movements:

Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) trades at around $23,600, slightly lower than Bitcoin itself.

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