On November 1, 2022, the Bitcoin index fell 8.34%, with the lowest of US$15,469 per coin that day. As of today, the highest price of Bitcoin in and is US$18,378 per coin.
At that time, more than 69,000 US dollars was equivalent to approximately 490,000 yuan, which could be used as a down payment for a house in many cities.
The sharp fluctuations in Bitcoin also led to a sharp increase in the amount of liquidated positions. According to Bitcoin data, in just one year, more than 5 million people in the cryptocurrency market liquidated their positions, with the liquidation amount reaching more than 2 trillion U.S. dollars, or about 14 trillion yuan.
According to data released by CoinGecko on December 31, the current total market value of cryptocurrency is US$842.9 billion, and the market value of Bitcoin is approximately 37%. ( China Times ) It was found that the market value in 2021 will exceed 3 trillion US dollars, which is only one-third. The current price is hovering around $16,500. Even well-known investment institutions and funds cannot escape the disaster, let alone retail investors .
During the crypto winter of 2022, in addition to the evaporation of trillions in market value, many crypto companies and founders also faced unprecedented losses, and even fell into bankruptcy and liquidation .
Recently, " Forbes " published an article saying that since March this year, the 17 richest investors and founders in the encryption field have lost a total of approximately US$116 billion in personal wealth. Among them, 15 people have lost more than half of their personal wealth in the past nine months, and 10 people have lost their status as billionaires. The net worth estimates of FTX founder SBF and Lianchuang Gary Wang, and DCG founder Barry Silbert have all dropped to 0. And given that the FTX crisis has weakened investor confidence and triggered a liquidity crisis throughout the crypto industry, the crypto bear market is unlikely to end soon, and the market decline is expected to continue until the end of 2023.
The beleaguered crypto industry and its wealthy pioneers face a moment of reckoning following the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and crypto hedge fund Alameda Research.
Matt Cohen, founder of Ripple Ventures, a venture capital institution, believes, “We are at a turning point in crypto, and everyone has to stop and say, ‘Okay, we’ve seen a lot of economic wealth destroyed in the past few months, and we need to start taking this seriously. ’. There are so many blockchain technology and crypto companies building solutions to problems that don’t need to be fixed, I think it’s time for the industry to be ‘reset’”
SBF and Gary. Wang
At the beginning of this year, SBF’s empire was making rapid progress. In addition to FTX, which is headquartered in the Bahamas, it raised US$400 million from well-known investment institutions at a valuation of US$32 billion. He himself became the second richest man in the crypto field with a net worth of US$24 billion on the 2022 Forbes Billionaires List.
SBF may now be bankrupt and awaiting criminal trial. Before being arrested by Bahamian authorities, SBF claimed that he only had $100,000 left in his bank account and that he was "uncertain" how he would pay his legal fees. Gary Wang, another co-founder and former chief technology officer of FTX, has pleaded guilty to the US SEC, and his once worth of US$5.9 billion has been "wiped into ashes." The demise of
FTX caps off this year’s crypto fortune bust. In fact, the economic impact of the epidemic has led to high inflation and rising interest rates, which has caused capital to be "drained" from the speculative crypto ecosystem, including the collapse of TerraUSD, an algorithmic stablecoin with a market value of more than $40 billion in May, to the collapse of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows in July, to the bankruptcy of well-known crypto lending institutions such as Voyager Digital, Celsius and BlockFi. These turbulences have caused approximately US$2 trillion in crypto market value to evaporate, with the “leader” Bitcoin also falling 65% from its peak of US$69,000 in November 2021.
CZ
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao’s personal assets have shrunk the most. Binance is the world’s largest crypto exchange, with a vast global network of many subsidiaries. CZ owns at least 70% of Binance’s shares, and Forbes currently values the company at $4.5 billion, far lower than the $65 billion it valued in March this year.
On November 6, CZ tweeted that Binance would sell the remaining FTT tokens it held, which in turn triggered a large number of users to panic withdrawals and triggered a run on FTX. Although CZ defeated his competitors, FTX's bankruptcy forced him to face the consequences, including the bankruptcy court's recovery of more than $2.1 billion in profits made by Binance from selling its shares in FTX back to SBF in the summer of 2021 (CZ helped SBF create FTX in 2019).
Not only that, CZ is facing increasing regulatory investigations (especially Binance), including ongoing investigations by European and US authorities into him and his company for allegedly assisting money laundering and other financial crimes (which Binance denies). In recent weeks, CZ has tried to convince Binance users that their crypto deposits are fully supported, and commissioned accounting firm Mazars (which once served former US President Trump ) to produce a "certificate of reserves" report, but has been widely criticized for not disclosing liabilities in the fund's financial statements, which are considered insufficient to fully reflect a company's financial health. Since then, Mazars has also suspended cooperation with crypto companies, which seems to have increased uncertainty about Binance’s finances and the future of the exchange.
CZ explained in a December 23 webinar that Binance has zero debt: “We are a very unique organization and we do not receive loans from any other organization.” He said. “We will prove all FUD Binance wrong.” Meanwhile, a Binance spokesperson said that Forbes’ estimate of CZ’s net worth is not an important metric for CZ, but more about creating meaningful use cases for the crypto space.
comes from Huobi.com
