This Week in Coins: Bitcoin, Ethereum Unmoved Amid Stock Slide

Given the carnage in US stocks on Friday, perhaps crypto investors should feel lucky to escape the week with Bitcoin and Ethereum basically flat.

That was it second week in a row of flat crypto prices. Bitcoin rose just 1.2% over the past seven days, while Ethereum gained 0.3%, according to CoinMarketCap.

Bitcoin in particular had a volatile week. On Monday, research from Kaiko found that the correlation between Bitcoin and gold has hit a 12-month high – and investors fleeing from both.

Not even a short-term and bullish one “Uptober” Twitter meme could keep the price of the world’s favorite cryptocurrency above $20,000. Bitcoin is currently trading at around $19,500.

Ethereum also failed to find a new support level and trundled along in the $1,300 price range all week. It is currently trading at $1,328.

American markets dipped on Friday following the publication of the US Department of Labor’s jobs report in September. Although job growth slowed in the past month, the U.S. added 263,000 new jobs and the unemployment rate fell. Many took it as a sign that the Federal Reserve will continue to cautiously tighten the nation’s purse strings – the Fed announced interest rate hikes of 0.75% three times so far this year.

Beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum, the rest of the crypto markets were also fairly flat. No leading cryptocurrency fell more into either the red or the green this week, except for Ripple’s XRP, which is up 10% on buzz about Ripple’s relentless legal battle with the SEC.

Dispatches from Washington and Brussels

On Monday, Kim Kardashian was fined 1.26 million dollars after failing to disclose that she was paid $250,000 to publish an Instagram post shilling a token called EthereumMax. The news predictably caught the interest of broad mainstream media that normally do not touch crypto.

SEC Chairman Gary Gensler so on Monday that Kardashian ran afoul of SEC regulations when the hashtag she used to alert her followers that the campaign was being paid for did not clarify “the amount she was paid and the nature of it.” Gensler has long hinted that the only cryptocurrency he believes does not fall under the Securities Authority’s remit is Bitcoin.

On Tuesday, the Financial Stability Oversight Council released a 124-page report on digital assets in response to President Joe Biden’s crypto executive order back in March. The report says that digital assets may pose a risk (but not yet) to US financial stability if the industry were to scale and integrate without “appropriate regulation.”

Finally, after two years of wrangling, European legislators agreed on the wording of landmark crypto legislation that could pave the way for a European regulatory approach. The full text of the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) was approved at a meeting of EU ambassadors on Wednesday, according to a letter from committee leader Edita Hrdá.

Celsius in warmer water

The ongoing case of crypto lender Celsius is one of them biggest bankruptcies of the industry’s ongoing liquidity crisis. Celsius was one of several companies to become insolvent following Terra’s collapse back in May, when the ecosystem’s dollar-pegged UST stablecoin lost the pin.

On Monday, the Financial Times reported that in May, Celsius former CEO Alex Mashinsky—who resigned last month – allegedly took out $10 million in crypto from his own account weeks before the lender filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

On the same day, a timeline for the auction of Celsius’ assets was published in an archiving from the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The deadline to bid is October 17, and if necessary, an auction will be held on October 20, 2022. No bidders have been confirmed yet, but it was widely reported in late September that FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried considered it.

Tuesday, Celsius co-founder Daniel Leon resigned from his role as Chief Strategy Officer after more than five years with the company.

Celsius hectic week ended on Friday, when the company inexplicably leaked thousands of customer names and transactions in a 14,500-page lawsuit. The compromising document has since been taken downalthough no explanation has been given for the leak.