Rug pulls, pice drops, and Elon Musk — oh my! Last week was a wild one in the crypto world, as record levels of volatility on May 19th and 20th saw prices for tokens across the ecosystem fall hard and sent traders scrambling to make transactions.
Whether it was proclamations about bitcoin’s energy usage from Elon Musk dragging down other tokens, the rug getting pulled out from underneath altcoin holders’ feet, or the large number of liquidations, it seemed every corner of the crypto space was impacted. And, by the time the dust settled on May 20, more transactions had been completed on May 19 and 20 than on any other day in the past month, with more than 100 billion transactions happening on each of the two days.
Now, as a new week begins, it’s time to take a look at the data from the past week and see what all this volatility really means for traders and analysts around the ecosystem. A tip of the hat to Flipside Crypto’s Kellen Blumberg, who put together many of the visualizations we’ll cover in this piece.
A dog day for meme tokens
Perhaps the hardest-hit investors during the volatility of the past week were those holding large amounts of meme tokens, including ELON and SHIB. According to Flipside Crypto data, those two tokens saw the largest individual price drops on May 19, as ELON fell by 46% in just one day, while SHIB was close behind, falling 42%.
Trouble did not only come for these recently popular currencies, however, as they were far from the only tokens to see a significant loss in value, however. 1INCH and SUSHI both saw their prices drop at least 40%, while nine other tokens saw prices drop by more than 30%, as can be seen in the chart above.
Liquidations flow freely
We’ll continue our analysis by taking a closer look at volatility on Compound. It was a chaotic day, as users raced to try to make sure they avoided being liquidated as prices continued to drop.
As can be seen above, however, it was a difficult day for many Compound users. Liquidations climbed to their highest level this year, topping the previous highs established in December of 2020 and March of 2021, by roughly 40 million liquidations.
CEX and DEX see massive token inflows
As liquidations loomed and prices around the ecosystem plunged last week, many traders looked to pour their existing token balances into various exchanges. CEXes and DEXes alike saw massive influxes in tokens last week, as 13 of the 18 tokens tracked by Flipside Crypto saw a greater volume of deposits than withdrawals on May 19 and 20.
Excluded from this massive increase, however, were stablecoins. As you can see above, where stablecoins can be seen in green, only HUSD saw more deposits than withdrawals during that time period, while DAI, FEI, LUSD, USDCX, and USDT were among the leaders in withdrawals for the day.
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