BTC is currently trading around $27,000 and ETH around $1,750. Notable gainers in the last 24 hours are FLR, GMX, and XRP. The global crypto market cap is ~$1.18T, down ~2.2% over the last day. DeFi Total Value Locked is ~$48b and BTC dominance is around 47%.
Traditional asset classes are little changed while crypto is down following concerning new regulatory developments. Most prominently, Binance, the industry’s leading spot and derivatives exchange by volume, was sued by the CFTC for unregistered trading activity in the U.S. The suit made various other allegations as well, including that it failed to develop an effective AML program. Binance referred to the lawsuit as “unexpected and disappointing,” and Binance CEO CZ added that the complaint “appears to contain an incomplete recitation of facts, and we do not agree with the characterization of many of the issues alleged in the complaint.” Lastly, highlighting the confused state of regulatory affairs, the CFTC continues to refer to ETH and various other digital assets as commodities despite the SEC & DoJ alleging them to be securities.
In other tech news, Alibaba announced a historic restructuring of its business. The company will split into six main business lines with distinct CEOs heading each unit, and each unit will individually raise capital or IPO as deemed necessary.
Other notable news includes: Polygon’s zkEVM went live on mainnet, and Vitalik Buterin made the first transaction on live stream inserting an onchain message paralleling commentary from the moon landing; Fidelity is building out a crypto research team; a judge put Voyager’s sale to Binance US on hold pending government appeal; a judge ruled that a DeFi protocol is custodial if a single developer holds the upgrade key, but crypto lawyers cautioned that the ruling could have implications for protocols using multisigs too; dYdX launched its private testnet on Cosmos; THORChain’s mainnet was halted amid new vulnerability reports; Bitcoin mining hashrate has exploded to a record high; the Euler exploiter apologized in an onchain message as he continued to return funds over a series of a transactions; and, SBF was banned from using online messengers under terms of his new bail agreement.
Authors:
Matt Kunke, Research Analyst | Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn
Brian Rudick, Senior Strategist | Twitter, Telegram, LinkedIn
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