Bitcoin prices dropped to a two-year low Wednesday morning as investors continue to grapple with an emergency deal struck between two of crypto's largest exchanges, Binance and FTX.
Bitcoin hit $17,415 early Wednesday morning, the lowest point since November 2020, according to Coinmarketcap. It's down 10.8% in the last 24 hours, trading above $17,655.
The decline comes as the unexpected deal — far from set in stone in a non-binding letter of intent — raised fears among investors and analysts that FTX's troubles could spread through the crypto universe.
“FTX’s leader Sam Bankman-Fried was the white knight who has been saving companies throughout most of this crypto winter," Edward Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda, told Yahoo Finance on Tuesday. "Seeing one of the major players wave the white flag is making a lot of people nervous that more pain could come."
Other cryptocurrencies also plunged.
The second largest cryptocurrency, ether (ETH-USD) sold off by 17% over the past day from $1,448 to $1,164. FTX's exchange token FTT, fell by as much as 71% on the day from $17 to $3. It is now trading above $4.8.
The cryptocurrency Solana (SOL), which FTX Founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried heavily supported, has sold off 28% in the last 24 hours from $28.19 to $20.
In the last 24 hours, the total market capitalization for all crypto assets has fallen by more than 10% from $980 billion to $880 billion, according to Coinmarketcap and Yahoo Finance charts.
The deal marks one of the darker days for crypto during a rough year for markets. It came as the up-and-coming crypto trading venue FTX faced a "significant liquidity crunch," according Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao in a tweet Tuesday, temporarily forcing the rival exchange to pause customer withdrawals Tuesday morning.
“There's a lot more concern that contagion risks and other liquidity problems are lurking," Moya said.
While Binance can still back out of the FTX deal, if the merger of the two of crypto’s largest players goes through, it could worsen business competition for other industry firms at a time when trading volumes have tanked, according to analysts.
So far in 2022, total crypto trading volumes worldwide across exchanges have fallen by 21% to $86 trillion, according to crypto indexing platform Nomics. In that period, Binance accounted for 21.7% of total global crypto trading volume, while FTX holds a 3.96% share.
Shares of Coinbase Global (COIN), a competitor of the two firms, closed 11% lower Tuesday from $54.50 to $50.83, even after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said over Twitter that the company "doesn't have any material exposure to FTX or FTT (and no exposure to Alameda)," and less competition would seem positive for the major exchange.
Still, Mizuho Securities senior analyst Dan Dolev wrote in a note that "the rapid fall from grace of a crypto exchange demonstrates how fickle the crypto industry could be. This is a red flag for COIN, where the vast majority of revenues are from trading crypto tokens."
Shares of Robinood (HOOD) also plunged 19.3%. Bankman-Fried owns a 7.6% stake in the stock and crypto trading platform according to a May SEC filing.
However, Dolev played down the day’s “knee-jerk” reaction, pointing out that unlike Coinbase, Robinhood only earns 12% of its revenue from crypto transactions.
As for other affected firms, Pranav Kanade, portfolio manager with VanEck Digital Assets, told Yahoo Finance the question remains whether FTX's liquidity crunch came as the result of bad debt.
"You can argue a lot of the leverage was taken out of the system in May and June of this year, but a lot of that got resolved by FTX bailing out those companies to some extent," Kanade said. "If there is bad debt, how much and who are those other entities?"
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David Hollerith is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance covering the cryptocurrency and stock markets. Follow him on Twitter at @DsHollers
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