Crypto World crosses fingers in hope that contagion has run its course

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Bitcoin climbed almost 8% in the final three days of the work week, while Ether surged 20%. Neither of the two dominant tokens has set a new low point in this bear market for almost a month. Bitcoin has been hugging the closely watched $20,000 round number, while Ether is hovering near $1,000. The relative stabilization in the charts is fueling hopes that contagion may have run its course following the spectacular collapse of tokens on the Terra blockchain, a wipeout that also sent hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and brokerage Voyager Digital into bankruptcy court. While much of the crypto world’s leverage is not recorded on blockchains, and therefore hidden from scrutiny, what is visible is encouraging, according to James Check, lead analyst at Glassnode.

Did you Know?

In the wake of the crypto market crash, the prices of hardware used to support the mining of crypto assets are also falling dramatically. For example, a high-end graphic card is now almost 45% cheaper compared to its price a few months ago.

“I do think that the vast majority of the forced selling has already happened,” Check said in an interview. “Essentially, the market seems relatively stable.” There are two important sources of potential sellers that are left, Check caveats. One is Bitcoin miners, who have seen the value of their hardware plunge along with the price of the token — stress that could worsen if Celsius’s mining subsidiary starts unloading some of its 80,850 rigs to raise capital. The other is traders who will indiscriminately sell risk assets of all kinds if the stock market starts to collapse again. On that front, this week did bring some potential good news for the laser-eye set. For one thing, the S&P 500