How does the future look for the likes of Ethereum, Genesis, and BlockFi? And what's the near and long-term outlook for Bitcoin prices? Top Crypto Forecast for 2023 One thing that happened in the aftermath of the FTX bankruptcy in November was a swift outflow of funds from crypto exchanges. By the third week of the month, it was known that FTX creditors were owed as much as $3.1 billion, but the full extent of the defunct company's debt, with its implications for the industry, had not yet come to light. "With each passing day... it becomes increasingly plausible that a wider scale reduction in confidence is in play", remarked an analyst from Glassnode. Still, November 22nd saw Bitcoin prices shoot up 4.2% and Ether was up on a similar scale. Solana and Dogecoin also took the opportunity to surge. Fairlead Strategies explained that, despite the destruction of BTX, which would normally be expected to act bearishly on Bitcoin prices, "in the near-term [Bitcoin] has seen an initial positive reaction to oversold conditions". In the following week, crypto lender BlockFi Inc. declared bankruptcy, but Bitcoin was resilient, jumping 2.1% on November 29th up to $16,485. Dogecoin even clocked a 10% gain in the course of that day. Analysts had not been converted into near-term crypto bulls, though, partially because chart patterns gave indications of further slumps in Bitcoin prices, and even a drop to $10,000. "The credit contagion is far from over", warned Cici Lu of Venn Link Partners. Some analysts have been gazing beyond the gloom and doom toward a recovery in the sector, but the time scale for such a prospect is unclear. More crypto firms may have to go under in the interim. CFD trading with crypto prices is all about gauging the price movements that are likely to manifest in the immediate future, so if you'd like to start now with iFOREX crypto trading, join us for a tour of the crypto space as we near 2023. The Contagion The Genesis crypto brokerage put a freeze on redemptions on its platform within days of FTX's collapse. Liquidity in the industry was difficult to come by, so crypto exchange Gemini said its clients would have to wait before withdrawing money from its product that allows yields to be earned on crypto funds. Before the collapse, crypto lender BlockFi had been engaged in transferring its assets to FTX for storage. Earlier in the year, FTX had offered BlockFi $400 million in credit and retained an option to buy the embattled company. BlockFi admitted they had "significant exposure" to FTX and put a stop to customer withdrawals soon after the FTX bankruptcy. Tether, which issues the world's biggest stablecoin USDT, said they had no exposure to Genesis or Gemini to speak of, but had seen a flurry of redemptions of USDT tokens. Between November 6th and November 16th, they watched $3 billion in the stablecoin drain away. Microstrategy is a publicly traded company with large Bitcoin holdings and suffered due to the plummeting token prices in 2022. By mid-November, their share prices had lost 70% for the year. Is Hope Nearby? Cathie Wood, manager of the Ark Invest investment house, was not shaken by November's events. On the contrary, she said, the bankruptcy would "battle test" the sector and offer it some re-invigoration. Wood did not budge from her prediction, made earlier in the year, that Bitcoin prices could reach all the way to $1 million before 2030, which would require a 6,000% rally in the meantime. In July, ARKK got rid of $75 million in Coinbase stock, which was unsurprising considering its difficult year. ARKK itself, which is an ETF that focuses on innovation in the fintech space (for instance Artificial Intelligence, robotics, and automation), took a big hit in 2022, losing 65% by mid-December. Wood did an about-turn and bought back Coinbase stock, starting in October. By December, ARKK owned as much as 6,139,480 Coinbase shares, with Wood focused on a broader, longer-term picture of the crypto sector than many others. On the Horizon In November, crypto platforms were inundated with demands to redeem tokens, and one of the biggest firms to face this challenge was Genesis. Fending off the prospect of bankruptcy, they insisted that "Genesis continues to have constructive conversations with creditors". According to reports, they were short of about $1 billion and tried to raise it through talks with Apollo Global Management, without immediate success. The crypto assets with staying power may end up being those that provide useful services, for instance, those associated with the Ethereum blockchain, which facilitates smart contracts. In the near-term, watch the news for further unravelling of the FTX wreckage before you start now with iFOREX crypto trading as CFDs.
