Crypto Market Sheds Nearly $100 Billion Overnight

The crypto market dropped roughly $98 billion in the past 24 hours, with both Ethereum and Bitcoin shedding last week's hard-earned gains.

By Liam J. Kelly

The total market capitalization of the crypto industry has fallen by almost 4% amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. 

Bitcoin also dropped by almost 4% over the past 24 hours, falling from roughly $44,000 yesterday to $41,100 early this morning. The leading cryptocurrency has since recovered some and is currently trading at jsut over $41,600, according to data pulled from CoinGecko. 

Ethereum is down over 5% after nearly crossing the psychologically important $3,000 mark on Thursday afternoon. Since then, the smart contracts platform has steadily shed points through the night and into this morning. It is now trading hands at $2,740. 

These losses come after both assets clawed back from even steeper losses at the end of February. Bitcoin plummeted to just over $34,000 and Ethereum fell to $2,300 on February 24. 

Other cryptocurrencies aren’t faring much better. Of the top ten largest cryptocurrencies, Solana is the market’s biggest loser, with its native token, SOL, down nearly 6.8% over the day and is now trading at just over $92. 

Elsewhere, Polkadot and Avalanche, two popular “Ethereum-killers,” have looked bearish too. Both cryptocurrencies are down approximately 3.5% over the past day. 

Popular crypto-adjacent stocks like Coinbase, PayPal, and Block aren’t providing investors with much shelter either. Coinbase (COIN) is down more than 8%, Block (SQ) is down 8%, and PayPal (PYPL) is down nearly 5%. 

Crypto market reacts to Russian invasion

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has wreaked havoc on the crypto market. 

Besides bearish price action, the events have also sparked calls for crypto exchanges to plug holes in the sweeping set of financial sanctions against Russia. 

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, for example, said that she was “disappointed” that crypto exchanges weren’t doing more against its Russian users. 

“I was disappointed to see that some of the so-called crypto exchanges, not all of them, but some of them, are refusing to end transactions with Russia,” Clinton said during a recent interview on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. 

Amid these calls, Coinbase, Binance, and Kraken have decided not to ban Russian users en masse, claiming that there is no legal grounds to do so.

Binance has, however, reportedly banned individual citizens from using the platform. In an interview with BBC on the subject, Changpeng Zhao, Binance's CEO, said, however, that he did not know how many accounts on the platform had been banned. 

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THE VIEWS AND OPINIONS EXPRESSED BY THE AUTHOR ARE FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND DO NOT CONSTITUTE FINANCIAL, INVESTMENT, OR OTHER ADVICE.