Odaily Planet Daily News Last year, a series of scandals weakened the liquidity of the crypto market. But even if prices recover in 2023, the so-called "Alameda Gap" still exists, and liquidity is still far from the level before the FTX collapse. The depth of the Bitcoin market is "much lower" than it was in November last year. At that time, the cryptocurrency exchange FTX operated by SBF collapsed. According to research firm Kaiko, the buying and selling volume of Bitcoin and USDT on 16 exchanges was within 2% of the mid-price, hovering around 8,000 this month, a decrease of about 40% from October. Kaiko first mentioned this phenomenon in November last year and called it the "Alameda Gap", noting that a sudden drop in liquidity usually occurs during market fluctuations as trading institutions withdraw bids and asks from the order book to better regulate risks. "It's not just Alameda, other market makers have been hit and are becoming more cautious," said Riyad Carey, a research analyst at the company. "It really depends on the token, but I would say there is still a 20-40% gap compared to previous liquidity levels. When liquidity is reduced, we tend to see prices more volatile in both directions, which has been the case in the past few months." But some people believe that the "Alameda Gap" phenomenon should not be blamed solely on Alameda, because many other companies have collapsed in the past year. Strahinja Savic, head of data and analytics at FRNT Financial, also mentioned Three Arrows Capital, Celsius "and many other well-known or unknown cryptocurrency funds," meaning that the decline in trading volume at the end of last year can be traced back to the "elimination" of these companies. Noelle Acheson, author of the "Crypto Is Macro Now" newsletter, said that weak liquidity shows that large traders have not yet returned to the market. Spot trading volumes have picked up, but a large part of it may come from medium-sized or small traders who do not insist on narrowing spreads. (Bloomberg)