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On Tuesday, January 9, U.S. Senators, JD Vance and Thom Thrills sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) demanding an answer to the recent X account hack and Bitcoin ETF approval farce. In addition, according to Fox Journalist, Eleanor Terrett, more congressional letters are set to hit SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s inbox.
Also Read: VanEck Advisor Labels SEC’s Fake Bitcoin ETF Approval Post As ‘Inside Job’
Senators’ Stance On Recent Bitcoin ETF Controversy
In a joint letter addressed to Gary Gensler, the Senators expressed deep concern over the agency’s social media communication regarding the errant approval of Spot Bitcoin ETFs. They highlighted a critical timeline where the SEC’s official X account initially announced approval, causing a surge in Bitcoin’s value. However, they later clarified the announcement as unauthorized, citing that their social media account was hacked.
Moreover, the letter emphasizes the potential impact on investors and questions the SEC’s internal cybersecurity procedures. Senators are demanding clarity, urging the SEC to address the nature of the breach, provide details on the investigation, and explain plans to rectify financial losses for affected investors. The SEC is urged to respond to the inquiries by January 23, 2024, as Vance and Thrills call for transparency amid this significant regulatory mishap.
In addition, the letter questioned the regulatory body if any employee was behind the account breach or if a third party was to be blamed. Furthermore, the Senators deemed the false Spot Bitcoin ETF approval post as a “colossal error” on the SEC’s part. In the letter, they stated, “It is unacceptable that the agency entrusted with regulating the epicenter of the world’s capital markets would make such a colossal error.”
SEC Receives Massive Backlash
After the SEC’s X account was compromised and the fake ETF approval post sent shockwaves through the industry, U.S. regulatory agency attracted criticism. In a recent post on X, Rep. Bill Huizenga heavily criticized Gary Gensler. Quoting the SEC Chair’s tweet, Huizenga wrote, “Does this mean we can blame more of the @secgov’s horrible rulemaking and so-called regulation by enforcement on a ‘compromised account’?”
Recently, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas held SEC responsible for the event. According to a post on X by Balchunas, it was a result of a “scheduled tweet gone bad.” In addition, Anthony Scaramucci, the Former White House Communications Director, disputed SEC Chair Gensler’s claim that the agency’s X account was compromised. Scaramucci asserted that a SEC staff member prematurely shared the news. He perceives it as the “amateurish and dishonest nature of the current SEC leadership regime.”
Also Read: US SEC Faces Massive Backlash Over Fake Spot Bitcoin ETF ‘Approval’ Post
The presented content may include the personal opinion of the author and is subject to market condition. Do your market research before investing in cryptocurrencies. The author or the publication does not hold any responsibility for your personal financial loss.
Bitcoin price moved from $28.6k to around $30k on Tuesday but stabilized around $29.6k during the early Asian trading hours on Wednesday.
The cryptocurrency market had mixed reactions following experts’ opinion of a possible black swan event in the DeFi lending industry triggered by the Curve finance and AAVE fiasco. Notably, the 300 million CRV that was used by Curve founder Michael Egorov as collateral for a $60 million USDT loan risks getting liquidated if the CRV price drops below 37 cents. According to the latest crypto price oracles, CRV value dropped over 20 percent since August opening to trade around $0.578 on Wednesday.
The cryptocurrency market was, however, thrilled by the third Litecoin halving event that is expected to take place on Wednesday. Essentially, Litecoin halving reduces LTC inflation by half thus giving the existing coins more value. Despite the crypto market uncertainty, Bitcoin’s price suddenly gained nearly 3 percent to briefly hit $30k. However, the Bitcoin price stabilized around $29.6k during the early Asian market on Wednesday.
“We had a lot of buzz recently around the Blackrock ETF but that can only drive bitcoin for so long and for so far. We got plenty of optimism with it but that initial optimism is fading slightly,” Josh Gilbert, an analyst at investment firm eToro, noted. “When bitcoin heads south so do most altcoins … and they’re selling off a little bit further given what we’re seeing with Curve,” added he.
Crypto Stock Market
Cryptocurrency and blockchain-related stocks fell to weekly lows as Bitcoin teased below $29k on Tuesday. For instance, Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN) shares closed Tuesday trading at $94.15, down 4.52 percent from the day’s opening value. The drop in COIN shares continued during the after-hours, despite Bitcoin briefly hitting $30k. Nonetheless, COIN shares have gained about 166 percent YTD to a market capitalization of approximately $23.14 billion.
In the crypto mining stocks, Riot Platforms Inc (NASDAQ: RIOT) shares closed Tuesday trading at $18.23, down 1.57 percent from the day’s opening price. However, RIOT shares gained approximately 1.26 percent during the after-hours as Bitcoin price bumped towards $30k.
Worth noting that RIOT shares have gained approximately 437 percent YTD to a $3.24 billion market capitalization.
Another Bitcoin mining public company, Marathon Digital Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: MARA) saw its shares drop 3.11 percent on Tuesday to close the day trading at $16.83. Nonetheless, MARA shares have gained about 392 percent YTD to a market capitalization of about $2.95 billion.
Notably, MicroStrategy Inc (NASDAQ: MSTR) has continued to sell its shares and purchase more Bitcoins. As a result, the company is currently the largest public holder of Bitcoins. According to the latest stock market data, MSTR shares did not experience significant volatility on Tuesday, although they gained approximately 207 percent YTD to trade around $436 on Wednesday.
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Bitcoin News: Bitcoin (BTC), the world’s largest crypto witnessed several hit backs over the past 24 hours leading it to print red indexes. Bitcoin price lost the crucial $28K level amid increased volatility in the market sparked due to withdrawal relate issue that popped up on Binance.
Also Read: Bull Market Issue; CZ Addresses Bitcoin Withdrawals Issue
As per the data, Bitcoin price dropped by 3.6% as its market cap lost around $20 billion in the last 24 hours. This drop comes amid the recent point raised by the world’s largest crypto exchange. Binance temporarily halted bitcoin withdrawals for a couple of hours mentioning a heavy volume and a spike in processing fees.
The post Just-In: Bitcoin Loses $28K Mark Amid Binance Fiasco appeared first on CoinGape.
]]>The price action displayed by top altcoins in recent times has yet to be encouraging with the market’s erratic price movement after a cascading effect suffered by FTX led to many altcoins, including the price of Ethereum (ETH), battling for survival. The Domino effect of the FTX saga and other huge investors has left the market at a standstill as the market has yet to make a major move. Still, there have been some great price movements by these top 4 altcoins lately despite the uncertainty surrounding the crypto market, leading to much fear about where the market could be headed. (Data from Binance)
Disclaimer: The picks listed in this article should not be taken as investment advice. Always do your research and invest only what you can afford to lose.
Top 4 Altcoins- Trustwallet Token (TWT) Price Analysis On The Daily Chart
The past few days have been filled with so much turbulence in the crypto space as many altcoins have struggled to show strength after losing their key support holding off price decline.
The current uncertainty surrounding the market has resulted in reluctance on the part of traders and investors to make altcoin purchases, as there is no assurance if they would be heading up any time soon.
A standout performer in these times has been TWT as the price rallied with over 100% gains in less than 48hours as the price broke out with strong bullish sentiment above $1, rallying to a high of $2.7 before facing rejection to a region of $3.
The price of TWT trades at $2.1, holding up well above the 50 and 200 Exponential Moving Averages as the price eyes further movement to the upside. If the price maintains its structure and bullish movement, we could see the price rallying to $3.
Price Analysis Of Litecoin (LTC) On The Daily (1D) Chart
LTC’s price has recently outperformed BTC after showing a bullish trend despite the market’s uncertainty due to the FTX fiasco.
Despite facing rejection to a region of $50, the price of LTC bounced off from this area as the price rallied to reclaim the 50 EMA acting as strong support for the price of LTC.
If the price of LTC holds above $60, we could see the price rally to a high of $65-$70 in no time.
Price Analysis Of GMX On The Daily (1D) Chart
The price of GMX was rejected from its resistance of $48 and is currently trading at $39.
GMX has maintained its bullish structure despite the rejection and market turmoil that has affected most crypto projects. The price of GMX needs to hold above the region of $35 to avoid the price going lower.
Top 4 Altcoins- Price Analysis Of Chiliz (CHZ) On The Daily (1D) Chart
The price of CHZ has continued to show bullish trends holding well above the 50 EMA.
Despite the pullback across crypto assets in the market, CHZ has continued to look strong, respecting the bullish trendline.
The price of CHZ broke the resistance at $0.236, a close above this region could send the price to a region of $0.3.
Featured image from zipmex, Charts from TradingView.com
- LINK’s price fails to hold amidst market turmoil as price falls back into its accumulation zone with a range-bound movement.
- LINK’s price continues to show strength after a bearish downtrend with the market’s current state, as things look uncertain for most traders and investors.
- LINK’s price bounces from a low of $5.8 on the daily timeframes as the price aims for a recovery toward the 50 Exponential Moving Average (EMA)
In the last few days, the crypto market has seen some drastic shift in sentiment, with Chainlink (LINK) and the price of other altcoins battling for survival after the news broke that Binance would not be taking over FTX and the company had gone bankrupt. Previous weeks saw the price of Chainlink (LINK) perform well, rallying from a low of $6.3 to a high of $9, breaking out of its long-range price movement. Most altcoins trend higher as many produced gains of over 200%, including DOGE rallying from a region of $0.55 to a high of $0.15, with many hoping for more recovery bounce. Still, these expectations were cut short by the uncertainty surrounding the crypto market, leading to much fear about where the market is headed. (Data from Binance)
Chainlink (LINK) Price Analysis On The Weekly Chart
The past few days have been filled with so much turbulence in the crypto space as many altcoins have struggled to show strength after losing their key support holding off price decline.
The current uncertainty surrounding the market has resulted in reluctance on the part of traders and investors to make altcoin purchases, as there is no assurance if they would be heading up any time soon.
The news of Binance rescuing the situation by taking over FTX led to so much tension as the crypto space remains unsettled, leading to most altcoins suffering in price, including the price of LINK, after breaking out of its range movement of over 180 days. Still, the price suffered a setback to its range zone.
LINK’s price declined to a weekly low of $6.3 before bouncing off this region, showing some great strength to a region of $6.4 as the price aims to break higher. The price of LINK needs to flip the region of $7.5-$8, acting as a resistance to support.
Weekly resistance for the price of LINK – $8.
Weekly support for the price of LINK – $6.3.
Price Analysis Of LINK On The Daily (1D) Chart
The price of LINK remains considerably strong in the daily timeframe as the price trades above $6.3 support after bouncing off from the region of $5.8.
If the price of LINK breaks above $8, we could see more rallies for LINK price; a break below a region of $5 would lead to more sell-offs for LINK.
Daily resistance for the LINK price – $8.
Daily support for the LINK price – $6.5.
Featured Image From Daily Hodl, Charts From Tradingview
Three weeks ago, Pixelmon, an NFT gaming project on the Ethereum blockchain, raised over $70M in a highly anticipated drop.
That’s insane. And you’ll soon learn why.
The ongoing boom in GameFi and Metaverse NFTs has clearly caused investors to drop their standards when it comes to doing their research. Mainstream media coverage of NFT flippers making millions has led to a fresh influx of fortune hunters looking to strike gold, or in this case, a rare jpeg. Hype and the fear of missing out rule the day, and are a lethal cocktail that enabled Pixelmon to pull it off.
Promises
Drawing on elements from established gaming franchises Pokemon, Minecraft and Fortnite, the project’s roadmap promises Pixelmon NFT holders play-and-earn abilities, future airdrops of in-game assets, and other perks in “the largest and highest quality game the NFT space has ever seen.”
The sale was conducted via a Dutch auction that started at 3 ETH ($9,000) with prices dropping by 0.01 ETH every minute. The entire collection of 10,000 NFTs sold out in an hour and the final buyers ended up paying 2.4 ETH ($7200).
The hype couldn’t sustain the lofty launch price, and prices on OpenSea quickly fell below 1.5 ETH ($4500), saddling initial buyers with a whopping 50% loss.
On Feb 25, the Pixelmon NFTs were revealed and bore little resemblance to the slick animations in the teaser posted prior to the sale.
As NFTs have evolved over the last year, we’ve seen the artwork become progressively better. The Pixelmons reversed that trend with what may be the worst reveal ever.
Blockchain sleuth zachxbt tweeted, “I think it’s fair to say all the buyers were rugged. Stop supporting cash grab NFT projects.”
He went on to highlight that the developers have spent 400 ETH of the raised funds to purchase high-value NFTs from collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club, CloneX and Azuki. This had been confirmed by Pixelmon project lead Syber in the project’s Discord prior to the reveal.
Even worse, some of the characters were stock models from Unity, a popular game engine and development platform, while others had been commissioned from a freelance artist who was unaware that their work would be used in an NFT project.
A mess. In response to the backlash, Syber tweeted an apology, saying that “the reveal was unacceptable.”
The next day, it was announced that development of the Pixelmon game would continue in partnership with Magic Media, a gaming studio.
The floor price of the collection currently sits at 0.32 ETH ($950), down 89% from the starting mint price of 3 ETH.
A star has been discovered, however.
Pixelmons with the ‘Kevin’ trait have inspired a series of memes and multiple derivative collections and have a floor price of 5 ETH ($15,000).
We’ll have to wait and see how the Pixelmon saga plays out, but the fact that an anonymous team with no proven track record was able to raise $70M on hype alone shines a light on the speculative mania currently prevalent in the NFT markets.
The GameFi space continues to be popular with investors in 2022. Open, interoperable metaverses like NFT Worlds, TreasureDAO and Worldwide Webb that encourage new projects to build on top of them have seen prices rise dramatically this year.
Competition for new mints has increased substantially since NFT flipping caught the attention of mainstream media. People reading about jpegs being sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars want in on the action, and everyone’s looking for the next Bored Ape Yacht Club.
The whitelist grind has turned into an industry, with some collectors outsourcing the tedious tasks.
Some influential NFT collectors see this as a sign that NFTs will underperform in the near term.
Treeverse founder Loopify recently posted a thread on the market.
An ongoing Twitter poll by Zeneca, an NFT influencer, shows that 60% of participants are currently either mildly or very bearish.
Walmart, the largest retail giant in the world has reportedly started testing Bitcoin ATM hosting services, as per a report from Coindesk. Walmart has quietly partnered with crypto ATM technology provider Coinme and offering $BTC to customers via 200 of its Coinstar kiosks.
“Coinstar, in partnership with Coinme, has launched a pilot that allows its customers to use cash to purchase bitcoin,” Walmart communications director Molly Blakeman said.“There are 200 Coinstar kiosks located inside Walmart stores across the United States that are part of this pilot.”
The news comes within months of the Litecoin ($LTC) fiasco when a fake Walmart press release claiming to accept $LTC as payment deceived most of the leading news agencies and even Litecoin. At the time many Bitcoin proponents have claimed that it was fake news, given why would world’s largest retail company partner with LTC when there is BTC is adopted left-right and center.
Bitcoin ATMs On the Rise
Bitcoin ATMs have continued to surge in adoption as they touched new highs in 2021. The growth of Bitcoin ATM adoption across the world indicates the rising popularity of the top cryptocurrency among the common public.
The US tops the list of countries with the highest share of Bitcoin ATMs close to 87% of the total ATMs installed across the world. Now that Walmart is testing with 200 ATMs, the number could only grow further once the company decides to install more machines across its 4,700 stores.
Apart from the US, El Salvador, the first nation to make Bitcoin a legal tender has also installed over 200 Bitcoin ATMs for people’s convenience and ease of transactions. These ATMs are already quite popular and see millions in remittance each day as per Nayib Bukele, the president of the country. El Salvador is the third biggest host of BTMs across the world.
Disclaimer
The presented content may include the personal opinion of the author and is subject to market condition. Do your market research before investing in cryptocurrencies. The author or the publication does not hold any responsibility for your personal financial loss.
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Monday’s Litecoin (CRYPTO: LTC) spike thanks to a fake press release about its non-existent partnership with Walmart Inc (NYSE:WMT) is a wake-up call to not take “this stuff so seriously,” as per Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) co-creator Billy Markus.
What Happened: Markus reacted to the LTC-Walmart phony news and noted that multiple mainstream news outlets reported the false story. He also pointed out that gains in LTC were erased in minutes.
See Also: How To Buy Litecoin (LTC)
Pure comedy:
– Phony article released about Walmart partnering with Litecoin
– Multiple mainstream news outlets report false story
– Litecoin skyrockets up 25% on the BS
– Story debunked
– Gains erased in minutesThere’s good reasons to not take this stuff so seriously
— Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) September 13, 2021
Former hedge fund manager and Bitcoin investor Michael Novogratz had a laugh on those who purchased LTC on the Walmart news.
The guys that bought $LTC on the Walmart news. https://t.co/xdbmhjN7oc
— Mike Novogratz (@novogratz) September 14, 2021
David Gokhshtein, founder of Gokhshtein Media who had earlier tweeted a CNBC story on Walmart accepting payments using LTC but also questioned if the news was genuine said he got rugged by the cryptocurrency.
Got rugged by $LTC this morning.
— David Gokhshtein (@davidgokhshtein) September 13, 2021
Entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano, a Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) said the U.S. Department of Justice will look for the people responsible for the fake press release but the attention should be on media regulation.
Everyone is yelling and screaming about regulating the crypto industry after this morning’s fake press release.
The DOJ will look for the people responsible.
But we should have a conversation about who is regulating the media for not doing their diligence before publishing??
— Pomp (@APompliano) September 13, 2021
Why It Matters: Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin and managing director of the Litecoin Foundation acknowledged in an interview with Bloomberg that the Foundation “screwed up” after one of its employees retweeted what was a fake announcement.
See Also: Profit-Booking Hurts ‘Ethereum Killer’ Cardano As Smart Contracts Go Live
“We try our best to not tweet fake news and this time we really screwed up,” he said — adding, “I deny that it has anything to do with us and we’ll try our best to figure out who did it — and we will stop fake news from spreading.”
As for Walmart, the company too took to Twitter to deny its relationship with LTC and issued a full-length statement as well.
An incorrect news release issued today falsely stated Walmart announced a partnership with Litecoin (LTC). Walmart has no relationship with Litecoin. Our full statement is here. https://t.co/BdjTWP2lHC
— Walmart Inc. (@WalmartInc) September 13, 2021
Price Action: LTC traded 0.37% higher at $178.48 at press time. The cryptocurrency has fallen 23.41% from an intraday peak of $233.06.
Read Next: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin Stay Subdued But ‘Hodlers’ Are Unfazed By Recent Sell-Off
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