The cryptocurrency ether fell sharply on Monday, briefly falling 9% to below the $3,600 threshold, following a hack estimated at over $100m targeting the decentralized finance protocol Balancer. At 3:30 p.m. in New York, ether was still down 6.6%, trading at around $3,600 according to CoinMetrics, i.e. a 25% drop from its annual high of $4,885 reached in August. The incident, which affects one of the major protocols of the Ethereum ecosystem, is adding to tensions in an already fragile market.
This hack comes at a time when the climate for digital assets is deteriorating. Several macroeconomic factors have recently reinforced risk aversion: in mid-October, Donald Trump's announcement of new tariffs on Chinese products encouraged a shift towards safe-haven assets such as gold, triggering liquidations of highly leveraged positions in cryptocurrencies. At the same time, comments by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell dampened hopes of a rapid cut in key interest rates.
The entire crypto sector felt the impact. Coinbase shares fell nearly 4%, while Strategy, a company with significant exposure to bitcoin, fell more than 1%. Analysts believe that this sharp correction, although violent, could allow for a form of decompression after a period marked by excessive speculation. However, it highlights the structural vulnerability of digital assets to security breaches in an uncertain macroeconomic and geopolitical context.
