Polygon, Solana Tokens Lead Majors Slide Amid Bitcoin Weakness

Selling pressure on bitcoin (BTC) contributed to a broader market drop as tokens of some of the largest blockchains fell as much as 6% in Asian morning hours on Thursday.

Bitcoin dipped under $22,000 during European hours on Wednesday, even as broader traditional markets remained relatively unchanged. Ether (ETH) shed over 2%. Among other large-caps, solana (SOL) and matic (MATIC) fell 6% in the past 24 hours, while Uniswap’s UNI and Avalanche’s AVAX fell 4% in the same period.

Artificial intelligence-focused tokens The Graph (GRT) and SingularityAI (AGIX) fell as much as 8%, paring gains from a month-long rise. Curve ecosystem tokens curve (CRV) and convex (CVX) fell 7%, while gaming-focused ImmutableX (IMX) dropped over 12%.

The CoinDesk Market Index (CMI), a broad-based index designed to measure the market capitalization-weighted performance of the crypto market, fell 1.2%.

Toncoin (TON) bucked the trend, rising 6% in the past 24 hours on no immediate catalysts. Shiba inu (SHIB) rose 2.2%, buoyed by the upcoming beta launch of Shibarium, its native blockchain.

As such, the market-wide decline came as crypto-friendly Silvergate Bank said it will "voluntarily liquidate" its assets and wind down operations of its holding company, Silvergate Capital Corp. (SI).

Elsewhere, CoinDesk reported that U.S. banking giant JPMorgan (JPM) is ending its banking relationship with Gemini.

Meanwhile, the drop in prices caused over $100 million in liquidations in the past 24 hours, data from analytics tool Coinglass shows. Slightly over 85% of these liquidations were on short positions, or from traders betting on falling prices.

Over $70 million worth of those figures occurred on bitcoin and ether futures alone.

Liquidations occur when traders borrow funds from exchanges to bet on crypto prices using a relatively smaller initial capital, one that is forfeited when prices reach a predetermined liquidation level.