Fears of a global recession gripped the global financial markets on Thursday, sinking the crypto market as investor appetite for riskier assets waned.
It was a particularly bearish session for the crypto market on Thursday. Recession fear gripped the global financial markets in the wake of the Fed’s largest rate hike since 1994.
The Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank followed the Fed with rate hikes, adding to the market angst. This time, central banks are not hiking rates to cool economies but to curb inflation at a risk to economic growth.
Bitcoin (BTC) resumed its downward trend, falling for the ninth day in ten sessions.
The US equity markets reversed gains from Wednesday, with the NASDAQ 100 sliding by 4.08%. After tracing the NASDAQ through the morning, bitcoin decoupled from the NASDAQ 100 late in the US session, with the crypto market taking a big hit in the afternoon session.
Thursday’s bearish session saw the total crypto market cap fall back to $852 billion. Another $87 billion came off the table as investors fretted over the threat of a global recession.
Thursday’s loss marked the ninth in ten sessions. For June, the total market cap has fallen in 12 of the 16 sessions, resulting in a $425 billion market cap slump.
With the markets focused on the threat of a global recession, a marked shift in the regulatory landscape will be another headwind the markets will need to manage over the near term.
From the top ten cryptos, ETH and SOL led the way down, with losses of 13.7% and 13.4%, respectively. DOGE was close behind, sliding by 12.1%.
Things were no better for the rest of the top ten. ADA (-10.9%), BNB (-10.0%), BTC (-9.7), and XRP (-8.9%) all struggled.
From the CoinMarketCap top 100, UNUS SED LEO (LEO) was the only crypto to buck the market trend, rising by 1.2%. ApeCoin (APE) was the biggest loser, tumbling by 19%.
For Tron (TRX), risk aversion masked USDD movements on the day, leaving TRX at risk of an extended sell-off.
After recovering to $0.98 levels, USDD fell back to a day low of $0.9705, the pullback coming despite the efforts of the TRON DAO Reserve to restore the dollar peg.
On Thursday, TRX fell by a relatively modest 5.8%, while the collateral ratio fell from Thursday’s 317.88% to 282.28% this morning.
Despite Thursday’s extended sell-off, total liquidations failed to reach levels seen on Tuesday. However, liquidations reflected market sentiment through the second half of the day.
While 24-hour liquidations fell back from Thursday morning’s $538 million to $210 million, at the time of writing, 1-hour liquidations painted a bleaker picture.
According to Coinglass, 1-hour liquidations stood at $22 million.
With over 28 years of experience in the financial industry, Bob has worked with various global rating agencies and multinational banks. Currently he is covering currencies, commodities, alternative asset classes and global equities, focusing mostly on European and Asian markets.