Markets Crater After Weeks Of Sideways Action

After nearly a month of low volatility, the bottom fell out of crypto markets on Thursday.

Bitcoin and Ether have fallen by 12% and 10% respectively over the past seven days, with other tokens experiencing even steeper declines.

Investors' interest in riskier assets like cryptocurrencies seems to have waned as US Treasury yields reach a 16-year high. Fears of further rate hikes by the Federal Reserve to combat inflation, along with the upcoming second estimate of US GDP data for Q2 2023, set to be released on August 30, are contributing factors.

The market now anticipates a 10% chance of a 25 bps rate hike in September, with 32% expecting one in November.

$800M Liquidated In 30 Minutes

In the past 24 hours, over $1B of leveraged positions were wiped out, marking the largest single-day liquidation event since the implosion of FTX in November 2022.

Nearly $800M of liquidations took place in just 30 minutes as BTC and ETH briefly crashed below $25,000 and $1,500 respectively.

Amid the carnage, there were some bright spots.

The SEC is reportedly set to approve an ETH futures ETF by October, and Grayscale is hiring for its ETF division.

THORChain's RUNE token has rallied 42% over the past week, likely due to its new streaming swaps feature.

THORChain Processes Record Volume After Introducing ‘Streaming Swaps’

RUNE Is Up 40% This Week With A Lending Platform Expected To Launch Within Days

The Defiant

Major Losers

Uniswap's UNI and Axie Infinity's AXS were battered, losing nearly a fifth of their value in the past week.

Shiba Inu fell 17% after the catastrophic launch of its Layer 2 network, Shibarium, with $1.7M worth of ETH lost forever.

Notably, Frax's FXS was the only DeFi token not to post double-digit losses, down only 4% in the past week.