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First Mover Americas: Crypto Markets Sinking on Silvergate

The latest price moves in crypto markets in context for March 3, 2023.

Updated Mar 3, 2023, 3:36 p.m. Published Mar 3, 2023, 1:34 p.m.

Silvergate Bank's woes are slamming the broader crypto market. (Will Foxley/CoinDesk)

This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.

Latest Prices

CoinDesk Market Index (CMI) 1,051 −48.0 ▼ 4.4% Bitcoin (BTC) $22,336 −986.9 ▼ 4.2% Ethereum (ETH) $1,566 −63.0 ▼ 3.9% S&P 500 futures 3,996.00 +11.3 ▲ 0.3% FTSE 100 7,947.07 +3.1 ▲ 0.0% Treasury Yield 10 Years 4.07% ▲ 0.1 BTC/ETH prices per CoinDesk Indices, as of 7 a.m. ET (11 a.m. UTC)

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Bitcoin was down 5% early Friday, a day after a spout of negative developments surrounding crypto-friendly U.S. bank Silvergate Capital (SI).On Thursday, Coinbase (COIN), Circle, Paxos, Crypto.com, Bitstamp, Cboe Digital Markets, Galaxy Digital and Gemini all announced they will suspend Automated Clearing House transfers and other business operations with the bank. Silvergate's stock tumbled 58% to $5.72 on Thursday. The wider crypto market also lost ground with major altcoins taking a hit on Friday. Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, shed 5%, filecoin (FIL) lost 9%, aptos (APT) was down 8%, and litecoin (LTC) dropped 7%.

The crypto futures market also took a hit, with exchanges liquidating longs or bullish bitcoin futures worth over $62 million during Asian trading hours on Friday. That's the highest amount since August, according to data from Glassnode. Meanwhile, short liquidations totaled just over $500,000. Liquidation happens when the market moves against a trader's bullish or bearish bet, leaving him or her with insufficient funds to keep the leveraged trade open. The dominance of long liquidations shows the leverage was skewed on the bullish side, meaning most traders were positioned for a price rally.

FTX said $8.9 billion in customer funds are missing, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal, saying FTX identified that amount in customer funds that it can’t account for. On Thursday, FTX, a crypto exchange that filed for bankruptcy in November, said it had identified around $2.7 billion of customer assets, compared with $11.6 billion of balances outstanding on customer accounts.

Chart of the Day

The chart shows bitcoin miners unspent supply or the number of new coins held by miners rather than sold in the market
The number has declined by 2,000 BTC to 1.8 million BTC, the lowest since July 2021.
It's a sign of renewed selling by miners, or those responsible for minting new coins.

Lyllah Ledesma

Lyllah Ledesma is a CoinDesk Markets reporter currently based in Europe. She holds a master's degree from New York University in Business and Economics and an undergraduate degree in Political Science from the University of East Anglia. Lyllah holds bitcoin, ether and small amounts of other crypto assets.

Omkar Godbole

Omkar Godbole is a Co-Managing Editor on CoinDesk's Markets team based in Mumbai, holds a masters degree in Finance and a Chartered Market Technician (CMT) member. Omkar previously worked at FXStreet, writing research on currency markets and as fundamental analyst at currency and commodities desk at Mumbai-based brokerage houses. Omkar holds small amounts of bitcoin, ether, BitTorrent, tron and dot.