Ethereum Rebounds as Bitcoin Holds Steady

The price of Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has made a brief recovery after a terrible week.

It had been hammered all of this week, falling from its two year high of $487 on Wednesday to $316 on Saturday evening. That's a decline of 35% in just three days.

The market fared a little better today. Its price rose to $356, an increase of 12%. It's still a great distance away from its peak of $487 early this week, but traders may feel lucky to not have lost far more.

Speculators may only, er, speculate about why $316 was Ethereum's price floor. Perhaps it had something to do with SushiSwap, the decentralized finance project that stoked fear in the DeFi community after its leader, Chef Nomi, dumped all his tokens on the market yesterday.

$SUSHI Price Doubles After Creator Shifts Control To FTX CEO

Chef Nomi, the pseudonymous creator of the Uniswap-like DeFi protocol, today transferred his control to the CEO of crypto exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried. Nomi had angered the SushiSwap community by withdrawing $13 million from $SUSHI's liquidity pool on decentralized exchange Uniswap. The community, as well as the General Manager of SushiSwap, 0xMaki, turned on him and alleged that he had pulled an exit-scam—something Nomi denied. Then Nomi went to sleep. Founder of SushiSwap DeFi Protocol Cash...

Nomi made off with about $14 million, but roughly $1 billion still runs through SushiSwap's protocols. And the whole thing is an experiment in decentralized finance—if SushiSwap collapsed, it would cast doubt on a highly experimental space into which investors have poured $8 billion in the past three months.

Nomi later handed over control of the contracts to the CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, who promised to devolve power to the community. The price of a $SUSHI doubled in price shortly after, about the same time that the price of ETH rose.

Bitcoin holds steady

Alongside ETH's rebound, Bitcoin's price held firm. The price of Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, increased just 0.64% today to its current price of $10,276.

That is a relatively minor price bump. But it's significant for its quiescence: Bitcoin fell from $12,369 earlier this week—its yearly high—to just under $10,000.

In crypto, investors consider Bitcoin's $10,000 price point to be a benchmark for the entire industry, since Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency by market cap and has a huge influence on the whole market.

If Bitcoin's price is above $10,000, all's okay. If it's below $10,000, time to panic. Maybe the extra zero is soothing. That Bitcoin is now firmly back above the $10,000 mark may quell anxieties within the crypto community that its bull run is about to end.