(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Is the Crypto Coin Collapse Finally Underway? [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-02-25

Last week I highlighted a story about how neo-fascist/libertarian president Milei of Argentina ran into a problem of his own making when he took to Xitter to personally promote a particularly shady crypto coin called $Libra that was supposed to help boost the Argentine economy, currently in a deep recession thanks to his “chainsaw” approach to government spending. Perhaps unbeknownst to Milei, this may have been part of a classic “pump-and-dump” scheme by $Libra’s founder/directors to cash out and leave all the meme investors who got sucked in holding the proverbial bag when its “price” promptly collapsed just a few hours later.

It turns out this may have just been the tip of the crypto iceberg that now seems to be in full swing. From Cryptopolitan today:

The crypto market is in a full-scale meltdown, with $325 billion in market cap wiped out since Friday morning as of press time, according to data from Coinglass, which also shows that the largest drop was when $100 billion disappeared within one hour. There were no major headlines covering the sudden crash, making it seem like not a big deal at all, almost as if no one even cared anymore. Even meme coins, which had been on fire in recent weeks, have taken a severe hit. Liquidity has dried up across the board, raising concerns about even more downside. The sell-off of course started with the Bybit hack on February 21 when North Korea’s Lazarus Group pulled off the biggest financial heist in history, draining $1.5 billion from Bybit’s Ethereum wallets. This theft was so big, it’s double the size of the previous record-holder, which is the $611 million PolyNetwork hack that happened in 2021. Ethereum, which was already performing terribly, got even worse as traders scrambled to pull funds out, fearing another FTX-style collapse. Even though Bybit CEO Ben Zhou quickly announced that the exchange would cover all losses, it wasn’t enough to restore confidence. Traders don’t forget billion-dollar hacks that easily. At first, Bitcoin stayed out of the mess. However, once the S&P 500 tanked on Friday, Bitcoin broke down too. The second stocks started slipping, Bitcoin followed, losing its key $98,000 support level.

Bitcoin had reached an all-time high of nearly $107,000 just five weeks ago, but is now down to $89,000 as I write, and is still sinking.

Solana, which has now dropped 22% since Friday. The memecoin sector, which had been one of crypto’s wildest success stories this year, is getting slaughtered. With Solana’s crash, traders dumped their memecoins en masse, draining the last bit of liquidity from the market. This actually started when Argentina’s President Javier Milei publicly endorsed LIBRA, a Solana-based meme coin, which quickly pumped like crazy—until it crashed into oblivion, wiping out $4.6 billion in investor money. The scandal-tainted Solana’s reputation, and now, with $1.72 billion in SOL tokens set to be unlocked on March 1, the market is preparing for even more selling pressure. According to digital asset manager Arca, altcoins as a group have already lost between 30-80% since mid-December. Even Dogecoin, which had been riding on Elon Musk’s federal workforce cuts, is down nearly 7%.

Dogecoin seems to be down a lot more than 7%. It reached its own all-time high of $0.476 on Dec 7 in the runup following the election and was still trading over $0.42 just prior to Trump’s inauguration. The current price of $0.21 represents a drop of 50% in a little over five weeks, and over 17% just since Friday. Enjoy the schadenfreude!

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/2/25/2306073/-Is-the-Crypto-Coin-Collapse-Finally-Underway?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/