Crypto Bulls Get Rekt as Ethereum, XRP Fall Harder Than Bitcoin

In brief

• Bitcoin dropped below $95,000 per coin on Friday, hitting a six-month low.
• But Ethereum and Solana experienced bigger sell-offs, and $1.36 billion in futures positions were liquidated.
• Some experts think the crypto space is now in a bear market, following recent losses.

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Bitcoin’s price plunged on Friday to below $95,000 for the first time in six months—but the altcoin market fared far worse, and traders who bet on rising prices are getting wiped out due to widespread liquidations.

Ethereum—the second-biggest digital coin—dipped below the $3,100 mark earlier Fridy and was recently trading for about $3,200 after a nearly 7% 24-hour dip. That makes it one of the worst-performing major cryptocurrencies of the day, according to CoinGecko data.

The coin’s price is now more than 35% below its August record of $4,946.

An even bigger loser, though, has been Solana: After dropping more than 8% over a 24-hour period, the coin was priced at $142 Friday morning New York time.

The Solana price dip comes despite solid flows into new exchange-traded funds giving investors exposure to the asset. Since their October 28 debut, the funds have collected money from investors every single day, per data from Farside Investors.

But it hasn’t been enough to sustain the sixth-biggest digital coin’s price. Solana is now more than 52% below its January record of $293.

XRP, the fourth-biggest digital asset, also plunged, shedding about 8% of its value in a day. The coin, which also this week became available to American investors via a new spot ETF, was recently trading hands for $2.30.

Traders betting on the future price of cryptocurrencies have also lost money as their positions have been liquidated: CoinGlass data shows that $1.36 billion in futures positions have been closed over the past 24 hours. The vast number of those positions was up of long positions—$1.21 billion worth.

The overall crypto market is down more than 4% to $3.35 trillion, according to CoinGecko. Bitcoin has ticked back up to about $96,000, but remains down about 6.5% on the day.

Experts told Decrypt that the industry is currently in a bear market, with a drop in institutional demand due to macro and geopolitical uncertainties—and so far, crypto has had one of its worst fourth-quarter performances.