The bears are holding on to the Crypto market amid weakened buying pressures. Following the announcement by a well-known auditing firm that it would no longer be accepting any new crypto clients, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of digital assets are being sold off on the international markets.
About 94,968 traders were liquidated on the last day, totalling $235.91 million in liquidations. The highest single liquidation event originated from Binance where an investor liquidated $5.52 million worth of top smart contract platform Ethereum (ETH) and stablecoin Tether before Mazars suspended its operation. former Kraken CEO Jesse Powell called this finding a “huge red flag” at the time (USDT).
After the collapse of FTX, a well-respected digital exchange that declared bankruptcy last month, crypto exchanges were under pressure to show proof of reserves. Sam Bankman-Fried, a former CEO, is currently being held in detention in the Bahamas on allegations that include conspiracy to commit money laundering and wire fraud.
Audit firm exit: Apparently, Mazars, a French auditing company that was engaged by Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, last month, is stopping its services due to worries that the general public would not completely comprehend the reports they curate.
Mazars was performing proof-of-reserve checks to ensure that a crypto exchange’s reserve information matched the assets of its customers.
In a statement, the company said it suspended the issuance of ‘Proof of Reserve Reports’ for cryptocurrency businesses out of concern about how they will be viewed by the public.”
ETH, the top crypto asset by market valuation, is among the top five most liquidated cryptocurrencies over the past 24 hours. Peer-to-peer decentralized network Litecoin, widely used meme currency Dogecoin (DOGE), native cryptocurrency Binance Coin (BNB), and Bitcoin (BTC)
Other prominent assets sold include the non-fungible token (NFT) community’s digital asset ApeCoin (APE), the smart contract platform Cardano (ADA), and XRP, the asset used to run Ripple Labs’ payments infrastructure.
Investors believed the modest gains would be important for the asset’s potential surge into the new year after Bitcoin recaptured the critical $18,000 position early in the week. But the flagship crypto has been unable to maintain its position, sliding to under $17,000.
For bitcoin (BTC) traders seeking optimistic signals on technical charts, things can soon get even worse.
The 50-week simple moving average (SMA) of the cryptocurrency is plummeting quickly and appears on track to cross below the 200-week SMA for the first time ever.
Based on technical analysis theory, the Crypto market is ready to go into a spiral when the two averages connect in a negative manner. This is known as the “death cross.”
Since hitting a record high of $69K in November of last year, the price of bitcoin has decreased by 75%.
Sellers have been unable to gain traction under the 200-day SMA throughout this bear market, which has turned out to be more severe than prior ones.
