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Key Takeaways
- Over $1 trillion in coin market cap value has been erased since crypto’s October peaks. Bitcoin sank below $90,000 overnight, to the lowest level since April, before recovering to near $93,000.
- Meanwhile, the crypto industry continues to offer investors new ways to move their money into the space.
Bitcoin is down. Crypto is still shipping.
Investment appetites are being tested as products—including new exchange-traded funds, initial coin offerings and an index-linked token—launch into a bear market for the industry’s best-known asset.
It’s happening at a challenging time for investors, both in crypto and risk assets broadly. The crypto market has lost over $1 trillion in market value, down more than 25% since bitcoin’s (BTCUSD) October peak. Meanwhile, the most well-known and largest coin recently continued its descent, sinking below $90,000 overnight to levels last seen in April, before recovering to around $93,000.
But amid the downbeat price action, investors continue to have more options for their crypto capital—which, for some, may amount to alternatives to bitcoin.
Why This Matters to Crypto Investors
Bitcoin is a huge part of the crypto market, accounting for more than half of its overall value. Yet the proliferation of other products—such as spot ETFs holding altcoins, some of which have double-digit year-to-date gains—could attract investors looking for alternatives.
Coinbase Global (COIN), the largest U.S. public crypto exchange, earlier this week debuted its revamped ICO platform—a marketplace for the crypto industry’s version of IPOs—with the launch of Monad’s token sale. CoinMarketCap, meanwhile, launched a crypto index token.
Also, the pace of spot altcoin ETF debuts has quickened in the last few weeks, owed in part to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new standards for coin fund listings.
Asset managers big and small are in the mix: There’s Fidelity Solana Fund (FSOL), Bitwise Solana Staking ETF (BSOL), and Canary Capital XRP ETF (XRPC). There’s 21Shares FTSE Crypto 10 Index ETF (TTOP), a fund of funds that tracks bitcoin as well as other coins including memes like doge (DOGEUSD) and decentralized exchange Hyperliquid’s token (HYPEUSD), and the 21shares FTSE Crypto 10 ex-BTC Index ETF (TXBC), a version sans bitcoin.
ETFs linked to baskets of coins that have huge slugs of bitcoin may be a tough sell in these markets, but single altcoin funds could find life yet. While bitcoin is down 2% year-to-date, altcoin performance has been mixed: Ether and sol are down 8% and 27%, respectively, according to Messari research. But Binance’s native token (BNBUSD) is up 30%, and Hyperliquid’s token roughly 60%, over the same period.
