Bitcoin Slumps Below $25.5K; SEC Books Binance
By Laxmikant Khanvilkar
The virtual digital asset (VDA) is currently going through a mayhem in early June. What triggered this? Blame it to the United States financial markets regulator Securities Exchanges Commission (SEC).
On Monday, SEC delivered a body blow to the fledgling industry by filing a suit against Binance – the world’s largest cryptocurrency trading platform.
Bitcoin (BTC), the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, which struggled to break out of the trading range of $26,500 to $28,500 for much of the past couple of week, slumped towards $25K during the U.S. trade as the allegations against Binance rekindled fears about industry integrity and the intent of regulators to exert more control over exchanges. Binance – and other exchanges – have been facing regulatory scrutiny for years.
Bitcoin was recently trading at about $25,750, down nearly 5% over the past 24 hours. Ether, the second largest crypto in market value, was recently changing hands below $1,812, off more than 4.8%.
ETH and other major altcoins followed a similar path to bitcoin. BNB, Binance’s exchange token, and SOL, the native cryptocurrency of the Solana blockchain, recently plunged more than 10%. ADA and MATIC, the tokens of smart contract platforms Cardano and Polygon, and popular meme coin DOGE were recently off more than 8%. Even litecoin, which has been rallying the past few weeks, fell more than 9%. The SEC suit called those tokens unregistered securities.
The global crypto market cap slumped 4.7% to $1.09 tn over the last 24-hours. The total crypto market volume surged 117.47% to $48.14 bn. The total volume in DeFi is currently $3.59 bn, and that of stablecoins $45.39 bn, account for 7.46% and 94.29% respectively, of the total crypto market 24-hour volume. Bitcoin’s dominance is currently 45.80%, a decrease of 0.13% over the day.
IC15 index, the barometer of top fifteen tokens, lost 3.74% to 36,474.
Industry observers found nothing surprising about SEC move. Joe DiPasquale, the CEO of crypto fund manager BitBull, called the SEC suit “unsurprising,” but also wrote that the exclusion of ether from the filing was “a good sign,” and added: “Unless any major developments impact Binance’s functioning, we don’t think the market is likely to lose a lot more.”
Elsewhere, equity indexes, including the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500, largely shrugged off the Binance hubbub, ticking down a few fractions of a percentage point, industry-focused stocks slumped. Coinbase lost more than 9% at market close. Shares of MicroStrategy (MSTR), which holds a vast amount of bitcoin on its balance sheet, fell more than 8.5%, Bitcoin miners Riot Blockchain (RIOT), Marathon Digital (MARA) fell more than 8%, while Bitfarms (BITF) dropped more than 7.4%. Safe haven asset gold traded flat just below $1,980.
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