Daily News Roundup: Stocks Start The Day Up while Bybit Delists LUNA/USD Contracts 

Earlier today, Bloomberg reported that the crypto spectrum had lost more than $200 billion in just the past day. The downward price movement comes after the entire crypto market crashed, with most currencies taking a downward trend. 

One Bloomberg presenter, Matt Miller, said that cryptocurrencies are having a Lehman moment, mentioning that some Billionaires have lost large chunks of their wealth in the past few weeks. 

However, Antoni Trenchev, Nexo Co-founder, quashed the idea that crypto has a Lehman moment. He noted that “We get one to two of those per year,” in fact citing last year’s China crypto ban and Covid 19 in the year before, which resulted in 50% declines. Antoni mentioned that the pressure in BTC at the moment” is the unwinding of the huge BTC reserves that the Terra Foundation had accumulated” as backing for UST.

Antoni also highlighted that he is curious to see at what point the markets will take a turn but expect that in the worst-case scenario, the pivot support is at $20k. However, he expects the $25k mark to be a turning point. 

In a CNBC interview, Olaf Carlson, the CEO of Polychain Capital, had similar sentiments on BTC and the ongoing events. He noted that events such as today’s crash happen “every year or two” across the crypto landscape. Mr. Calrson mentioned that this could be the “moment of peak opportunity for those that have conviction and are willing to make a long term bet” on crypto.

In another CNBC interview, Judica Chou, Krakens head of OTC options trading, noted that crypto investors should expect further volatilities.

Stocks Started The Day Up But Plunged During The Day

Stocks started the day well today, with many rising when the trading opened, with Nasdaq increasing by more than 1.2%. Wu Blockchain tweeted that US Stocks “The three major stock indexes all rose at the opening of trading, with the Nasdaq rising more than 1.2%. Ethereum is back at $2000. USDT fell about 1% again after Yellen named Tether.” Yesterday, Nasdaq closed the market by 0.67% off, but the sentiment earlier in the day was very bullish. 

While many stocks started in a bullish position, stocks like Apple and Nasdaq tumbled later in the day. Mass exits from the big stocks contributed to the bearish trend seen late in the day.

Ethereum started the day at a low of about $2k but dropped even further to $1748 by mid-morning. However, a recovery was noticed in the late parts of the day, with ETH trading at $1938.

The UST and Luna crash has impacted the prices of the entire crypto market, including ETH. Tether also dropped its peg to 98% today. When asked about the state of stablecoins like UST and others, Olaf highlighted that asset-backed stablecoins have different risks when compared to algorithmic stablecoins. Olaf insinuated that the coins are worth investing in. 

Elsewhere, Bybit Delists LUNAUSD Inverse Contracts

Today, Bybit, one of the largest crypto exchanges, delisted the LUNAUSD inverse contract. A few hours before, they gave public notice in a press release, “We’re writing to inform you that the LUNAUSD Inverse Contract will be delisted at 8 AM UTC on May 12, 2022.”

By 8 AM UTC, Bybit delisted all the LUNAUSD Inverse Contracts, no longer supported trading, and canceled any active order on the inverse contracts. All open positions were closed based “on the best available price with taker fee.” Bybit also noted that at the moment, they set a few mechanisms to secure all traders in the network against the volatilities.