Benjamin Cowen, the analyst widely credited with calling the 2021 crypto collapse, has issued another sobering read on the market.
The warning capped a punishing week. It began when Strategy (NASDAQ: MSTR) made its first Bitcoin (BTC) sale in years. It might have been a tiny 32 BTC against its 840,000-plus stash, but it was enough to rattle sentiment.
Bitcoin, trading well above $73,000 before the sale, has since slid more than 18% for the week to $59,493 at press time, as per Decibel, and is down over 25% for the month.
Related: LIVE: Bitcoin crashes below $60K for first time in 20 months
The last time Bitcoin flirted with $60,000 was in early February, during the US-Iran escalation, and even then it only fell near $62,000.
The rest of the market followed. Ethereum (ETH) dropped more than 10% in 24 hours to around $1,578, XRP fell about 5% to $1.10, and Solana (SOL) slid more than 6% to $64.56.
According to CoinGlass, 315,953 traders were liquidated over the past day, totaling $1.58 billion, Bitcoin accounting for roughly $487 million and Ethereum nearly $435 million.
Zcash and Cardano deepen the rout
Two coins amplified the damage. Zcash, one of crypto’s oldest privacy coins, cratered more than 36% after its founder disclosed a vulnerability in its Orchard shielded pool, found by researcher Taylor Hornby on May 29.
The flaw could have allowed an attacker to mint unlimited counterfeit ZEC tokens undetected. Developers deployed an emergency fix on June 1 before going public with the disclosure. But the damage was done. At press time, the coin alone had driven over $132 million in liquidations.
Cardano added to the gloom. Its native token ADA slid on June 3 as founder Charles Hoskinson warned of a “wave of failures” in the ecosystem, then fell further after he announced he was taking a break.
ADA token down more than 16% in 24 hours to $0.1588 at press time, despite Hoskinson’s clarification that he was not abandoning the project.
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Cowen’s blunt warning
In a pair of posts on June 5, the Into The Cryptoverse founder argued the current weakness is textbook.
“Midterm years always feel really bad for crypto,” he wrote, adding that this stretch feels worse because the market “topped on apathy.”
However, his hopes for Bitcoin were still up.
“While many cryptocurrencies will die out, I think Bitcoin will survive.”
A couple of hours later, Cowen pushed back on those dismissing the four-year cycle.