Bitcoin Slump Near $26K; SEC Delays Spot ETFs Decision
By Laxmikant Khanvilkar
The leading virtual digital assets (VDA) slumped on Friday Asia trade, and leading the slide are
Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), both returning to their week ago level, after the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) delayed decisions on six applications for spot bitcoin ETFs including from BlackRock and Fidelity.
Following the news break, BTC, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, plunged below $26,000 mark. It has staged a mild recovery and was trading at $26,033.59, down 4.29%. ETH, the second largest crypto in market value, managed to outperform broader markets, sinking 2.83% over the last 24-hours to $1,651.94.
Alongside the SEC delay, bitcoin was weakening heading into the Friday release of the monthly U.S. jobs report, which often stirs asset prices.
Earlier, during the week, crypto markets were brimming with optimism that was fuelled by Grayscale’s court victory over the SEC.
On Wednesday, the federal appeals court asked the SEC to review its rejection of Grayscale Investments’ attempt to convert Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an ETF.
The court decision was louder by observers saying that the Grayscale victory potentially opens the door for a spot bitcoin ETF in the U.S.
The broader crypto market mirrored the two leading assets’ move.
Solana’s SOL and Aptos’ APT lost about 6% over the past 24 hours, while Polkadot’s native token DOT and decentralized exchange UniSwap’s UNI endured nearly 7% declines.
In tandem with sliding prices the global crypto market cap dropped 3.29% to $1.05 tn, over the last 24-hours. On the other hand, the total crypto market volume surged 20.46% to $37.72 bn. The total volume in DeFi is currently $2.45 bn and all stablecoins $35.65 bn, representing 6.50% and 94.53% respectively, of the total crypto market 24-hour volume. Bitcoin’s dominance edged down 0.63% to 48.28%.
IC15 index, the barometer of top fifteen tokens, slumped 4.01% to 35,052.18.
Meanwhile, a New York court classified BTC, ETH as “commodities” while dismissing a proposed class action lawsuit against leading decentralized crypto exchange Uniswap. The ruling to scrap the suit before it goes to trial stated the true defendants of the case were the issuers of the “scam tokens” in question and not Uniswap.
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