Decentral Block Post

Recently, bad news has abounded, and the resulting fear is real. DeFi is looking dead, altcoins completed their lifecycle by returning back to $0 (I guess that’s a joke), and Bitcoin’s (BTC) price fell lower than even the smartest brains in the room expected. 

A unifying theme of the most recent bull market appears to have been greed. Everyone got too confident and too greedy, and it shows by the amount of debt and leverage that is being unwound as 3AC, Celsius, BlockFi and Voyager contend with the real threat of going belly up.

It seems Bitcoin miners and BTC mining companies also were not immune to the sentiment of over-exuberance and the belief that “up only” was a fact until Bitcoin’s price hit the long-awaited $100,000 target most analysts stuck to.

Historically, Bitcoin miners are an elusive species that are quiet and unwilling to spill the sauce to the public, but Cointelegraph had some success in securing a moment with HashWorks CEO and founder Todd Esse to discuss the current state of the mining industry and his predictions on where the market might head over the next year.

Cointelegraph: Bitcoin is trading below the realized price, and it is also below the miners’ cost of production. The price is also below the previous all-time high and the hash rate is dropping. Typically on-chain analysts pinpoint these metrics hitting extreme lows as a generational purchasing opportunity, thoughts?

The Singapore-based crypto venture firm Three Arrows Capital (3AC) failed to meet its financial obligations on June 15 and this caused severe impairments among centralized lending providers like Babel Finance and staking providers like Celsius.

On June 22, Voyager Digital, a New York-based digital assets lending and yield company listed on the Toronto Stock exchange, saw its shares drop nearly 60% after revealing a $655 million exposure to Three Arrows Capital.

Voyager offers crypto trading and staking and had about $5.8 billion of assets on its platform in March, according to Bloomberg. Voyager's website mentions that the firm offers a Mastercard debit card with cashback and allegedly pays up to 12% annualized rewards on crypto deposits with no lockups.

More recently, on June 23, Voyager Digital lowered its daily withdrawal limit to $10,000, as reported by Reuters.

The contagion risk spread to derivatives contracts

It remains unknown how Voyager shouldered so much liability to a single counterparty, but the firm is willing to pursue legal action to recover its funds from 3AC. To remain solvent, Voyager borrowed 15,000 Bitcoin (BTC) from Alameda Research, the crypto trading firm spearheaded by Sam Bankman-Fried.

Bitcoin (BTC) preserved $20,000 for another day on June 23 with calls for another 20% drop still surfacing.

Bitcoin under $10,000 not impossible

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD ranging just above the $20,000 mark over the 24 hours to the time of writing.

As ever, the behavior reflected moves in United States equities markets, which stayed flat on the day.

Remarks by Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell had provided only brief volatility. Cointelegraph noted that Powell's Congress testimony provided no new information regarding macro policy.

As such, crypto commentators stuck to previous assertions — the outlook was uncertain, they said, but a potential fresh drawdown may only involve a trip to $16,000.

Ethereum's token Ether (ETH) could be entering a "bull trap" zone after rebounding back above the $1,000 mark from 18-month lows of $885. 

Ether price paints a "rising wedge"

The first among these indicators is a "rising wedge," a classic bearish reversal setup that forms after the price trends upward inside a range defined by two ascending but converging trendlines. The wedge setup gains further confirmation if the trading volume drops alongside the rising prices.

Theoretically, a rising wedge resolves after the price breaks below its lower trendline and eyes a run-down toward the level at length equal to the maximum height between the wedge's upper and lower trendline

Ether has been forming a rising wedge since mid-June, as shown in the chart below.

Hence, its interim bias appears to the downside, with a decisive breakdown below the lower trendline risking a decline toward the $870–$950, depending on where the breakdown begins.