Dear clients,
Bullish Bitcoin has been the surprise winner of the banking crisis. However, investors seeking to increase their rates are faced with a hurdle: lack of liquidity, which can cause prices to fluctuate wildly.
The price of the #1 cryptocurrency has jumped 40% to around $27,700 since March 10, when the Silicon Valley Bank bankruptcy spread to major markets. However, on the other hand, its liquidity is dwindling.
According to data provider Kaiko, Bitcoin’s market depth indicates the asset is at its lowest liquidity level in 10 months, even lower than after the FTX crash in November.
Slippage, a measure of liquidity that describes how much prices move between placing and executing a trade, has also increased. Slippage when buying bitcoins for US dollars on the Coinbase exchange is 2.5 times higher than it was at the beginning of March. Slippage for a $100,000 simulated sell order has doubled in the last month, meaning the average price received per bitcoin is worse than it was a month ago.
Market makers say there is a big network effect and liquidity will remain a problem at least in the short term. The network effect was the collapse of Silvergate Capital and Signature Bank, whose networks have long been used by market makers who increase liquidity through the rapid purchase and sale of tokens for transactions on exchanges.
Further restricting liquidity, Binance — the world’s most liquid crypto exchange — last week ended zero-fee trading for almost all of its bitcoin trading pairs, hitting the ability of market makers to charge higher fees for executing trades on the platform.
The disappearing liquidity can be traced back to the collapse of the FTX exchange and the Alameda Research hedge fund. Alameda was one of the largest liquidity providers in the crypto industry and its bankruptcy left a void that was exacerbated by the 2023 banking sector turmoil.
Although most market participants expect the gradual arrival of new contenders to take over Silvergate and Signature‘ spot, no one expects a complete replacement to appear overnight.
