SOL, XRP Lead Slide in Crypto Majors as Bitcoin Lingers Below $30K

Profit taking in bitcoin (BTC) contributed to a broader market drop as tokens of some of the largest blockchains, such as Solana's SOL fell as much as 8% in the past 24 hours, data shows.

Bitcoin lingered under $30,000 on Friday, dipping below the significant price level on Thursday at around traditional market opening hours in the U.S as the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (NDX) index sold off during the day.

"Crypto markets moved in line with global macro as traders repriced the risk of Fed hikes and central bank tightening given labor market resilience," Jon Knipper, director of crypto treasury management at digital asset advisory Republic Crypto, said.

"Bulls have been on a tear this year," he added, noting the NDX's 40% and BTC's 80% year-to-date gains, "and have been knocked back by the growing realization that tighter monetary conditions, for longer, are increasingly probable."

Ether (ETH) shed over 3%. Among other large caps, XRP fell as much as 6% in the past 24 hours, while Cardano’s ADA and Avalanche’s AVAX fell 4% in the same period.

Elsewhere, stellar's XLM dropped as much as 6.6% as traders likely took profits after a 10% rise over the past week. Chainlink’s LINK traded flat following a 15% rise on Thursday – buoyed by the introduction of its CCIP protocol earlier this week. MKR, the governance token of lending platform MakerDAO, defied the broader market's price action, surging 11% in a day as investors welcomed the activation of a token buyback program.

Some of the selling pressure may have also arisen as U.S. House Republicans introduced a new digital assets oversight bill on Thursday that aims to establish a regulatory framework to protect investors in the crypto sector.

Analysts said parts of the revised bill exclude from the definition of "digital assets" a range of traditional securities such as stocks, bonds, "transferable share[s]," "certificate[s] of interest or participation in any profit-sharing agreement," and so on.

“All they have to do is argue that a token is a "transferable share" "a profit interest" etc,” Gabriel Shapiro, general counsel at crypto fund Delphi Digital, tweeted. “XRP and such will be fine but DeFi can still be persecuted at will... actually the regulators will have expanded authority to do so.”

Meanwhile, the drop in prices caused over $66 million in liquidations in the past 24 hours, data from the analytics tool Coinglass shows. Slightly over 70% of these liquidations were on longs positions, or from traders betting on higher prices.

Liquidations occur when traders borrow funds from exchanges to bet on crypto prices using a relatively smaller initial capital, one that is forfeited when prices reach a predetermined liquidation level.

UPDATE (Jul. 21, 17:38 UTC): Updates headline, adds analyst comment, context about equities market and MKR price action.