This week in coins. Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.
Crypto’s growth has been limited this week as the market is still pricing in the impact of another possible one rate hike from the fed. Those signs led to a strengthening dollar, but halted the previous week’s crypto rally, which was spurred when Ethereum’s “formula” Upgrade went live.
This week’s news was a veritable celebration of regulatory stories in both the United States and European Union, with drama in Washington centering on the SEC’s ongoing crackdown on crypto companies –1,500 to date According to a tweet Monday from Chairman Gary Gensler, who is marking his second year as chief US securities commissioner.
Both Bitcoin and Ethereum fell this week. Bitcoin occasionally held above $30,000 but eventually started falling on Wednesday, spiral down to its current level of $27,340, down 10.3% from last week.
Ethereum had a similar trajectory, occasionally holding above $2,100 through midweek before dropping to $1,851, a 7-day loss of 11.7%.
Many of the top 30 cryptocurrencies by market cap saw losses of just over 10%, including XRP at $0.456866, Cardano (ADA) at $0.392358, Dogecoin (DOGE) at $0.079389, Polygon (MATIC) at $1.01, Solana (SOL) is changing hands at $21.45, Polkadot (DOT) at $5.91, Litecoin (LTC) at $86.36, Avalanche (AVAX) at 17.16 $, Uniswap (UNI) at $5.48, Cosmos HUB (ATOM) at $10.91 and Stellar (XLM). sits at $0.093942 at the time of writing.
US regulators are cracking down, EU regulators are making laws
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) crackdown on crypto companies made headlines Monday when the agency sued another major crypto company for allegedly failing to comply with securities laws, the Seattle-based exchange Bittrex.
In its lawsuit, the SEC called six cryptocurrencies which Bittrex allegedly offered as unregistered securities: OMG Network (OMG), Dash (DASH), Monolith (TKN), Naga (NGC), Real Estate Protocol (IHT), and Algorand (ALGO).
The drama continued on crypto-Twitter, where a clip from Gensler praises Algorand made the rounds. It comes from a talk Gensler gave at the 2019 MIT Sloan Idea Exchange, a conference hosted by the school when Gensler was a professor of global economics and management there.
Several Republican lawmakers responded to the SEC’s regulation-by-enforcement strategy by: a Letter of Condemnation to the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday. At the hearing, Rep. Tom Emmer put Gensler to the test, saying, “You were an incompetent cop on the street,” before claiming the SEC chairman was squeezing American companies into the “hands of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party).”
On Wednesday, the committee turned its attention to stablecoins. Republicans and Democrats collided via a bill currently referred to as the “To be added Act of 2023”. Democrat Maxine Waters said she never completed negotiations with Republican Patrick McHenry and lawmakers are now starting from scratch. Democrat Stephen Lynch also criticized some of the proposed legislation.
Good news came out of the Texas Legislature on Friday. The Texas House of Representatives an invoice approved local crypto exchanges must hold reserves sufficient to meet all obligations to customers.
The European Union ultimately saw the biggest advances in crypto legislation this week. The European Parliament passed the Crypto Asset Markets (MiCA) bill by 517 votes in favour, 38 against and 18 abstentions at a session in Strasbourg on Thursday.
The legislation means the bloc’s 27 member states will now adopt a unified approach to crypto. Companies have one and a half years to familiarize themselves with the rules. The stablecoin legislation will not come into force until July 2024 and the rest of the legislation will not be implemented until January 25th.
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