Bitcoin claws back $30,000 after SEC’s Gary Gensler grills Congress

Bitcoin returned above the $30,000 mark and Ether gained ground on Wednesday morning in Asia after Gary Gensler, the head of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, was criticized in a congressional hearing for a series of regulations he plans to introduce, including his approach to cryptocurrencies. All top 10 non-stablecoin tokens gained as Gensler faced backlash due to the fines and lawsuits he has filed against crypto platforms. Polkadot led the winners. U.S. stock futures traded lower in Asia after Wall Street closed flat on Tuesday.

See related article: The SEC’s Gary Gensler dodges questions about whether Ethereum is a security

Fast facts

• Bitcoin rose 3.30% to US$30,248 in the 24 hours to 09:00 a.m. in Hong Kong, according to CoinMarketCap data. Despite falling below the US$30,000 mark this week after the SEC sued the Bittrex exchange, the world’s largest cryptocurrency with a market cap of US$584 billion is up more than 80% so far this year.
• Ether rose 1.21% to $2,100, gaining 11.15% in the past seven days. The world’s second largest cryptocurrency has fluctuated around $2,100 in the past five days. Data from chain analytics company CryptoQuant showed a decline in Ethereum-related purchases on crypto exchanges following the blockchain’s Shanghai upgrade on April 13.
• Polkadot led the gainers, gaining 3.38% to $6.89 and adding 7.11% for the week.
• In Tuesday’s congressional hearing, the SEC’s Gensler said in prepared testimony that “the vast majority of crypto tokens are securities,” but dodged the question of whether Ether is a security or a commodity when asked by Patrick McHenry, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. .
• Ahead of the hearing, all Republicans on the committee, led by McHenry, criticized Gensler in a letter about the SEC’s approach to digital assets, saying that “the SEC has forced players in the digital asset market into regulatory frameworks that are neither compatible with the underlying technology . also not applicable because the firms’ activities do not involve an offering of securities,” and “the only entity to blame for the lack of registrants is the SEC itself.”
• XRP rose 3.17% to $0.5285 for a weekly gain of 2.80%. Ripple Labs, whose crypto payment platform is powered by XRP, is another crypto-related platform in dispute with regulators. The SEC filed a lawsuit in December 2020 alleging that Ripple sold $1.38 billion in XRP as an unregistered security. The case is still before a US court and a ruling is expected later this year.
• The total crypto market capitalization rose 2.29% in the last 24 hours to $1.28 trillion. Total trading volume in the last 24 hours rose 5.53% to $46.85 billion.
• In the NFT market, the Forkast 500 NFT index rose 0.32% to 4,061.33 in the 24 hours to 09:00 in Hong Kong, up 2.04% for the week. The index is a proxy measure of the performance of the global NFT market and includes 500 eligible smart contracts on a given day. It is managed by CryptoSlam, a sister company of Forkast.News under the Forkast.Labs umbrella.
• The average selling price of NFTs in US dollars has increased in April, rising from around $110 on April 1 to over $131 on Wednesday, a move that can be attributed to a general uptick in cryptocurrencies, said Yehudah Petscher, an NFT strategist at Forkast Labs.
• US stock futures were trading lower to little changed as of 9:00 a.m. in Hong Kong. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.11 percent. S&P 500 futures were 0.07% lower. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell 0.09 percent.
• The three US stock indexes closed mixed on Tuesday. First-quarter earnings at U.S. companies are generally better than expected, but Atlanta Federal Reserve President Raphael Bostic and St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said in separate interviews that they envisioned rate hikes continuing into 2023.
• US interest rates are currently between 4.75% and 5%, the highest since June 2006. Analysts at CME Group now see a 15.2% chance that the Fed will keep interest rates unchanged at its next meeting on May 3, while 84, 8% predict a 25 basis point increase, up from 84.4% on Tuesday.

See related article: US House Financial Services Committee releases draft stablecoin bill for Wednesday hearing