Over $500m in Liquidations as Market Speculates on ETFs, Etherscan Acquires Solscan

Market Update U.S. equity indices are continuing their slide to start 2024, with the SPY dropping -0.65% and the QQQ falling -0.86%, while the DXY (+1.24%) has pushed up to $102.6. Crypto assets are experiencing significant volatility as $BTC (-4.65%) briefly dropped more than 9% to the mid-$40,000s amid fears of the SEC rejecting spot bitcoin ETF applications. Despite most altcoins suffering large losses on the day, $ARB is showing strength, rising 13.77% today as it surpassed $2.5 billion in TVL. Additionally, $MKR is outperforming this week, gaining 10.64% after co-founder Sam MacPherson tweeted his outlook for the year and announced a 1:24,000 “token split” in an effort to improve Maker’s “meme-ability” and increase popularity within the retail crypto community.Matrixport analyst Markus Thielen expects that the SEC will reject all spot Bitcoin ETF applications this month despite many industry experts forecasting the opposite. Thielen’s report was widely circulated among news outlets and the crypto community, potentially catalyzing the $526 million liquidation cascade this morning, marking one of the largest crypto liquidation events in the last year (see below). As mentioned in yesterday’s Crypto Market Update, funding rates across crypto assets have been ext