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First Mover Americas: Altcoin Crash May Be on the Cards
The latest price moves in crypto markets in context for Sept. 12, 2023.
Updated Sep 12, 2023, 3:16 p.m. Published Sep 12, 2023, 12:01 p.m.
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.
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Bitcoin reversed Monday’s decline to three-month lows under $25,000 during Asian trading hours, jumping back to around $26,000 as open interest on Binance, Bybit, OKX and Deribit fell to $4.8 billion from $5.05 billion. The decline in open interest suggests short traders were abandoning their bearish bets in what’s known as a short squeeze. The price recovery may remain capped due to a lack of immediate bullish catalysts. The bitcoin spot ETF optimism has faded, with observers shifting focus to the impending liquidation of FTX's altcoin holdings.
An altcoin crash is coming, with around $3.4 billion worth of crypto tokens likely to be sold by bankrupt exchange FTX, according to Matrixport. FTX wishes to sell $200 million worth of crypto assets a week in order to return fiat currency to users, which would mean an overhang for altcoins for the remainder of the year. “Crypto venture capital (VC) funds are also under immense pressure to return funds to their investors,” Markus Thielen, Matrixport’s head of research, wrote in a Monday report. “Those VC funds are likely to remain as crucial sellers of altcoins and must cash out.”
Bitget has established a $100 million pot to invest in exchanges, data analytics firms and media organizations as it seeks to broaden its horizons beyond its crypto trading business model. The firm said it expects tightened regulations and growth of layer-2 blockchain networks and DeFi technologies to bring about an evolution in how centralized exchanges operate. It is, therefore, seeking to diversify the services it can offer and capitalize on merger and acquisition opportunities that will be presented in the coming months. The fund, called the EmpowerX Fund, follows just months after Bitget set aside $100 million to target Web3 startups in Asian countries.
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- The chart shows ether's price and Ethereum's revenue since May 2019.
- As of today, the token's price appears overvalued relative to Ethereum's dwindling narrative.
- "Fundamentals – as measured by the revenue generated across the Ethereum blockchain – have failed to pick up. This has led to a notable overvaluation of Ether prices relative to underlying fundamentals," Matrixport's head of research and strategy Markus Thielen, said in a note to clients on Monday.
- Source: Matrixport
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- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
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Coinbase Sees Crypto Recovery Ahead as Liquidity Improves and Fed Rate Cut Odds Climb
The crypto exchange also took note of a so-called AI bubble that continues to go strong and a weaker U.S. dollar.
What to know:
- Coinbase Institutional is seeing a potential December recovery in crypto, citing improving liquidity and a shift in macroeconomic conditions that could favor risk assets like bitcoin.
- The firm's optimism is driven by rising odds of Federal Reserve rate cuts, with markets pricing in a 93% chance easing next week, and improving liquidity conditions.
- Several recent institutional developments, including Vanguard's crypto ETF policy reversal and Bank of America's greenlighting of crypto allocations, have contributed to bitcoin's rebound from recent lows.
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