7 major events to look back at the craziest week in crypto history

Looking back at the history of cryptocurrency development over the past decade, everyone knows that many crazy things have happened in this field, such as: Mt. Gox suffered a large-scale hacker attack in 2014; American electric car giant Tesla purchased about $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin; Tesla CEO Elon Musk supported Dogecoin on SNL (talk show "Saturday Night Live"), etc. Although these historical events were the most sensational at the time, they are nothing compared to the series of crazy events that happened in the past week.

In the coming days, I’m sure there will be a lot of articles interpreting these crazy events, and some of them may involve some serious soul-searching about what exactly caused the series of crashes. Regardless, let’s take stock of what happened in the craziest week in cryptocurrency history.

1. Terra crashes

Until a week ago, Terra was the hottest project in crypto: its governance token LUNA ranked in the top ten by market cap, and its algorithmic stablecoin UST, pegged to the U.S. dollar, ranked fourth among all stablecoins. However, who would have thought that both of them would collapse almost at the same time (LUNA was trading at just 0.1 cents, while UST bottomed out at 13 cents). In fact, many projects had already collapsed before this, but none of them were as dramatic as Terra's overwhelming fall. I believe that in the near future, the crypto industry will give a conclusion to this disaster and rationally analyze why so many people in the industry trusted Terra's high-risk structure.

2. $200 billion in cryptocurrency market value evaporated in 24 hours

It was previously reported that just before Terra crashed, the cryptocurrency market had lost over $1 trillion in market value. Bitcoin’s total market value in 2020 was only $200 billion. You may have noticed that most crashes were driven by macroeconomic forces, not just cryptocurrencies, and that the cryptocurrency market is now large enough to withstand huge losses. However, it is worth noting that this is a staggering $200 billion!

3. Coinbase crash

Last Thursday, Coinbase's stock price (COIN) bottomed out at $40.83, but it has fallen 90% from its initial price of $381 in April last year. It is worth mentioning that Coinbase is a giant company in the encryption industry. Unlike many technology companies, it has been profitable most of the time. In fact, before the collapse of COIN, Coinbase continued to spiral upward, which also shows that Wall Street does not know enough about how to evaluate cryptocurrencies. (Last Friday, COIN's stock price rebounded to around $70).

4. US Treasury Secretary says cryptocurrencies pose no “systemic risk” to the US economy

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress this week that cryptocurrencies pose no “systemic risk” to the broader U.S. economy, which is definitely a big deal because “systemic” is a technical term, and if there is “systemic risk”, it means that the crypto industry will be subject to a series of punitive new regulations.

5. The crypto community’s attitude towards Tether has improved

Stablecoins are supposed to be “stable”, but this week, the concept of “stability” in the crypto market seems to have been subverted. Tether (USDT), the largest stablecoin by market value to date, also fell to $95 during the market downturn. However, at the time of Terra’s collapse, people found that Tether’s anchor relationship was relatively reliable, and by increasing scrutiny of Tether’s opaque accounting practices, perhaps a tragedy similar to Terra would not occur.

6. SBF took a piece of Robinhood

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried revealed that he has acquired 8% of the shares of the crypto app Robinhood. According to this trend, it is likely to indicate that the next step will be a full acquisition of it. Robinhood was once a darling of Silicon Valley and an important competitor of Coinbase, but the company's growth is slowing down, and it has begun to lay off 9% of its employees. The stock price has plummeted by 70% in a year. If they are really acquired by SBF, it will undoubtedly be an ironic turn.

7. Musk is not going to acquire Twitter?

The craziest week in crypto history wouldn’t be complete without Musk.

On Friday, the Tesla CEO hinted that he might not acquire Twitter, then clarified that he was "still committed to the acquisition," but what will happen next is anyone's guess. Twitter is one of the largest social media platforms in the world, and Musk's influence is unquestionable, but will this thing work? Let's wait and see.

Well, those are the 7 major events that happened in the craziest week in crypto history. The crypto industry has entered its craziest roller coaster ride to date, but most people in the industry still feel that everything will be fine.