The bitcoin price collapsed to a 2-year low in trading Tuesday amid the bankruptcy of FTX, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges.
The bitcoin exchange rate was $15,735,000 as of 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, with the value of the most popular cryptocurrency dropping to $15,480,000 during trading, which is the lowest value since November 11, 2020, according to CoinDesk.
The cryptocurrency market has lost more than $1.4 trillion this year due to a number of problems, including unrealized projects and lack of liquidity due to the global economic downturn. These difficulties have left many cryptocurrency companies facing a string of bankruptcies.
One such company was the owner of the FTX exchange. The company initiated bankruptcy under Article 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in early October. Before that, another major cryptocurrency exchange – Binance, which was planning to buy the assets of FTX – abandoned the deal after due diligence. The company explained its decision by the identified errors in the management of customer funds, as well as reports about the investigations conducted by U.S. regulators in relation to this site.
In addition, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said his company will start selling FTX tokens owned by FTX. This led to the collapse of FTX, whose market valuation once reached $32 billion.
A day earlier, it was revealed that FTX owed the 50 largest lenders $3.1 billion, with a total of 1 million lenders lending to it.
Investors fear that the collapse of FTX could cause a chain reaction in the sector, which further puts pressure on the cryptocurrency market. On Monday, shares of Coinbase Global (SPB: COIN) Inc., another major cryptocurrency exchange operator, plummeted 8.9 percent in U.S. trading, with its market capitalization plunging below $10 billion, the lowest since Coinbase went public.
