Billionaire crypto investor, Barry Silbert, the founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group, on Saturday offered sympathy and advice to those who have lost fortunes recently.
It’s been a tough six months to be a crypto investor. Whipsawing markets, faltering asset prices, rising interest rates yields, and high inflation have all combined to shock stock, bond and crypto markets.
The price of crypto’s best-known coin, bitcoin, has slumped since November and “stable coins” that were touted as safe and secure because they were pegged to the dollar and monitored via exchanges have seen their valuations crumble.
Bitcoin hit a 10-month low last week nd sales of non-fungible tokens, aka NFTs, plummeted between January and March 2022.
See also: How a bitcoin market ‘in extreme fear’ compares with the past, and what to expect next
Victims of the bloodbath — which comes amid a broader stock market rout — range from the billionaire crypto titans who run leading marketplaces such as Coinbase
COIN,
+16.02%
and Binance to lowly retail investors who have poured their life savings into cryptocurrencies.
The Winklevoss twins and other cryptocurrency moguls who bet big on bitcoin have seen their fortunes plummet in recent weeks during a steep selloff in the market, the New York Post reported.
“I lost over 450k usd, I cannot pay the bank,” reads one of the top posts on the Reddit forum for Terra Luna, a cryptocurrency that has lost more than 99% of its value over the past week. “I will lose my home soon. I’ll become homeless. suicide is the only way out for me.”
“My ex-colleague attempted suicide,” reads another top post on the forum. “He basically moved all of his savings to crypto in 2021 and LUNA was a massive player in his portfolio.”
While Luna’s
LUNAUSD,
+168.75%
collapse is the most spectacular, other cryptocurrencies are also in freefall. Bitcoin
BTCUSD,
-1.60%
was trading around $28,300 Thursday afternoon, down 20% over the past week and nearly 60% lower than its all-time high of $69,000 in November 2021. Other major cryptocurrencies including ethereum and solana
SOLUSD,
-2.34%
are now worth fractions of their all-time highs.
The entire cryptocurrency market now has a market capitalization of $1.2 trillion — less than half of the $2.9 trillion it was worth in November, according to CoinMarketCap data.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). You can find a list of additional resources at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.