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Bitcoin Plunges Below $20K for First Time Since December 2020; Ether Drops Below $1K

The continuing plunge in traditional financial markets and panic about crypto lending platforms sent Bitcoin into the teens for the first time in more than 18 months.

Updated May 11, 2023, 5:29 p.m. Published Jun 18, 2022, 9:06 a.m.
Bitcoin plunges below $20K (OGNYAN CHOBANOV/Getty Images)
Bitcoin plunges below $20K (OGNYAN CHOBANOV/Getty Images)

Bitcoin (BTC) sank below $20,000 for the first time since December 2020, losing 9.5% in the past 24 hours. At time of publication, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap was changing hands around $18,984.1 after trading at a low of $18,739.50.

Ether (ETH), the second-largest crypto, also continued its decline, falling 9.78% to about $992 at time of publication.

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The crypto panic – which began a few weeks ago with the Terra ecosystem collapse and then spread to the Celsius platform – has moved on to hedge fund Three Arrow Capital, which reportedly had its collateral liquidated by crypto lender BlockFi.

Checking traditional markets, U.S. stocks saw more massive selling on Thursday, with the Nasdaq tumbling 4.1% and the S&P 500 3.25% before a slight recovery on Friday. For the week, the Nasdaq and S&P are each lower by about 6%.

Amitoj Singh contributed to this report.

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Pudgy Penguins: A New Blueprint for Tokenized Culture

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Pudgy Penguins is building a multi-vertical consumer IP platform — combining phygital products, games, NFTs and PENGU to monetize culture at scale.

What to know:

Pudgy Penguins is emerging as one of the strongest NFT-native brands of this cycle, shifting from speculative “digital luxury goods” into a multi-vertical consumer IP platform. Its strategy is to acquire users through mainstream channels first; toys, retail partnerships and viral media, then onboard them into Web3 through games, NFTs and the PENGU token.

The ecosystem now spans phygital products (> $13M retail sales and >1M units sold), games and experiences (Pudgy Party surpassed 500k downloads in two weeks), and a widely distributed token (airdropped to 6M+ wallets). While the market is currently pricing Pudgy at a premium relative to traditional IP peers, sustained success depends on execution across retail expansion, gaming adoption and deeper token utility.

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HYPE token's 30% surge is a story of crypto-traditional market convergence, treasury firm says

HYPE's price rise in candlestick format. (CoinDesk)

HYPE has surged 30%, outperforming bitcoin, ether and the CoinDesk 20 index by a big margin.

What to know:

  • Hyperliquid's HYPE token has surged more than 30% to $33, far outpacing bitcoin, ether and the broader crypto market, as trading activity on the platform accelerates.
  • The token rally represents the merging of traditional assets with the crypto world, according to Hyperion DeFi, which is a HYPE treasury company.
  • Originally a crypto perpetuals exchange, Hyperliquid has expanded into tokenized trading of equity indices, individual stocks, commodities and major fiat pairs via its HIP-3 upgrade.