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Crypto Markets Today: BlockFi Files for Bankruptcy Protection, MakerDAO Rejects $500M Proposal to Invest in Bonds and BTC Slides

Crypto prices dived amid continued market contagion triggered by the FTX collapse earlier this month. Crypto Markets Today is CoinDesk’s daily newsletter diving into what happened in today’s crypto markets.Read MoreCoinDesk

Crypto lender BlockFi filed for bankruptcy protection Monday, indicating it hoped to restructure, continuing operations in the meantime.

This article originally appeared in Crypto Markets Today, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter diving into what happened in today’s crypto markets. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.

BlockFi has about $257 million in cash on hand and a Bermuda-based affiliate is also filing for liquidation in a similar process, according to a press release.

According to the company’s petition, BlockFi’s executives estimate the company has more than 100,000 creditors, and checked off the ranges. Executives estimate the company has between $1 billion and $10 billion in both assets and liabilities.

The company’s largest creditors include West Realm Shires Inc., the legal name for FTX US, which has a $275 million unsecured claim, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which has a $30 million unsecured claim. The majority of the other top 50 creditors’ names were not shared.

A rocky year: BlockFi, which suspended withdrawals a few weeks ago due to the ongoing confusion about FTX’s assets, has faced a lot of setbacks. The company liquidated a large client earlier this year, and it needed a line of credit from FTX to survive.

The lender was set to raise funding at a $1 billion down round valuation in June, after raising $350 million at a $3 billion valuation in March 2021. As recently as July 2021, the company was looking to go public within the next 18 months, with a potential $500 million fundraise coming soon.

Bitcoin (BTC) slid around 2% amid news that crypto lender BlockFi had filed for bankruptcy protection earlier in the day. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was trading around $16,200, down 1.9% in the past 24 hours.

The MakerDAO community rejected a proposal to use up to $500 million of the stablecoin USDC to invest in bonds with crypto investment firm CoinShares. As CoinDesk’s Krisztian Sandor reported, CoinShares had proposed managing between 100 million and 500 million USDC and actively investing the money in a portfolio of corporate debt securities and government-backed bonds with the aim of returning a yield matching the Secured Overnight Financing Rate. On Monday, some 72% of votes were cast against the proposal.

Equity markets fell amid widespread protests against Covid lockdowns in China. The S&P 500 index dropped by 1.5% at closing. The Nasdaq Composite and Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 1.5% and 1.4%, respectively.

11/28 MW Chart (CoinDesk Research)

Ether’s price dropped following a “whale” address moved 73,224 ETH, worth $85.7 million, to Binance during the Asian trading hours, according to an analysis by on-chain researcher Lookonchain. Investors typically transfer coins to centralized exchanges when they intend to sell or use the coins as a margin in derivatives trading. Therefore, an uptick in exchange inflows often paves the way for heightened price volatility. Ether was around $1,170, down roughly 3% in the past 24 hours.