Bitcoin Stays Below USD 26,000 In Mixed Market, Binance’s BNB Biggest Loser In 24 Hours
Bitcoin rallied but continued to trade below $26,000 on Monday afternoon in Asia, while all other top 10 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies traded mixed, as investors brace for the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) crackdown on cryptocurrency exchanges.
See related article: Hong Kong lawmaker urges Coinbase to set up shop in city under new crypto rules
Crypto trading mixed
Bitcoin rose 0.21% to US$25,812 in the 24 hours to 4pm in Hong Kong, according to CoinMarketCap data. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has lost 3.82% in the last seven days following the US SEC’s lawsuit against two of the largest crypto exchanges, Binance and Coinbase.
Ether, the second largest cryptocurrency, fell 0.97% to USD 1,736, after losing 7.31% in the past week.
BNB, the native token of the world’s largest crypto exchange Binance, was the biggest loser in the last 24 hours, falling 5.5% to $224, losing 25.59% for the week. Last week, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Binance, its US affiliate and Zhao alleging securities violations. Binance faces 13 charges in the lawsuit, including the unregistered offering and sale of BNB and BUSD tokens and unregistered activity related to its Simple Earn and BNB Vault products and staking program.
“The SEC appears to have failed to consider the drastic and pervasive negative impact its actions could have on users and the industry,” a Binance spokesperson said last week. “We now join a number of other crypto projects facing similar misguided actions by the SEC, and we will vigorously defend our business and the industry.”
The SEC has also sued Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the US, on similar charges.
“We’re in this environment of regulation by enforcement. I don’t feel like there’s a clear rulebook. The only high-level statement they’ve made is that anything but Bitcoin is a security, [and] it’s just not what the law says, and by the way, it would also mean the end of the crypto industry in the US…we have to go to court to challenge it, and we’re proud to do it for the industry and for America,” Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong told The Wall Street Journal.
Cardano’s ADA and Polygon’s Matic were the biggest gainers in the last 24 hours. Cardano rose 6.11% to $0.2788, although it lost 25.72% on the week. Polygon rose 4.59% to $0.6292, but fell 29.13% in the last seven days.
Total crypto market cap fell 0.25% to $1.05 trillion and total market volume fell 21.12% to $27.29 billion in the last 24 hours.
NFT sales on Bitcoin network increase
The indices are proxy measures of the performance of the global NFT market. They are managed by CryptoSlam, a sister company of Forkast.News under the Forkast.Labs umbrella.
In the non-fungible token (NFT) market, the Forkast 500 NFT index fell 1.71% to 2,999.94 in the 24 hours to 18.40 in Hong Kong, bringing its weekly losses to 9.16%.
Discard ETH NFT Composite lost 1.34% to 1,056.57 and fell 5.19% for the week.
Ethereum NFT sales fell 11.75% to $13.04 million in 24 hours, according to CryptoSlam data. Bored Ape Yacht Club recorded the highest sales volume among NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, rising 3.57% to $1.46 million in 24 hours.
“This has been an extremely difficult week for crypto and NFTs due to the US SEC filing lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase,” according to Yehudah Petscher, NFT strategist at Forkast Labs, the parent company of Forkast.News. “During this new phase of scrutiny of, well, everything on the blockchain, the NFT community has really come together to support the developers.”
NFT sales on the Bitcoin network increased by 42.14% to $6.73 million. Derps saw the most sales volume among NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain, climbing 52.67% to $4.61 million in 24 hours.
“Bitcoin is still holding on to number two and appears to be on autopilot. More traders are being brought into the Ordinals ecosystem as the appeal of participating in the early days of the historic chain’s NFT scene becomes too great to miss, Petscher added.
