GM. It's been a busy week in the world of crypto. In case you missed it, we've got you covered from the latest grumblings on Twitter to recent updates about the SEC and the series of lawsuits filed against some of the top centralized cryptocurrency exchanges. Let's take a look.
A Sigh of Relief for Binance and Crypto
The big story that caused a bit of panic in the market early last week was when the SEC filed emergency relief in US courts claiming that crypto exchanges like Binance and Coinbase were selling what was named by SEC chair Gensler as alleged securities including Polygon $MATIC and Cardano $ADA along with several others. The SEC requires that all securities be licensed and registered and that sellers of securities also be licensed. Historically (and legally for tax purposes) cryptocurrencies are considered to be commodities. As such, they have not been treated with the same level of scrutiny as securities.
While many in the crypto space maintain cryptocurrency needs better regulation and protections for 'investors,' the decision by the SEC was seen by many as abrupt and over-extensive. Binance maintains it does not operate a securities trading platform, and affirms all customer funds are not only safe, but liquid.
Binance is no stranger to FUD, but CZ remains well-composed and poised as one of crypto's greatest proponents. While Binance is still subject to litigation from the SEC, steps are being taken to assure that BinanceUS customers are still able to withdraw their assets from the platform and that if users choose to keep their assets on BinanceUS, they will be safe. While there is still plenty of uncertainty about this situation, proponents of CZ and Binance have faith the platform will continue to provide service and maintain the safety of customer funds. We will be watching closely to see what becomes of the SEC's actions against Coinbase and Binance in the near future.
What Does the Market Say?
Shortly after the news broke, major cryptocurrencies felt the pain. On June 13th, $BTC was trading at $26291, and on the 15th hit the local bottom at $24,859: a 5.7% drop. Most altcoins took a larger dive in tandem following some stablecoin fud.
For context, Tether $USDT de-pegged very slightly for about two hours when it dipped from its position at .9998 down to .9958. Following the brief de-peg of $USDC earlier this year, and last year's catastrophic collapse of the Terra-Luna ecosystem, people got scared.
Many believe the brief crash was the result of a massive sell-off of crypto assets and conversion to stablecoins following the Binance SEC news. Tether quickly recovered, and still holds its peg around a dollar, and most cryptocurrencies have fully recovered their positions and are trading higher than they were before the Binance news. $BTC started the week at $25,860 and ended the week at $26,537. We're still a long way from the halvening, but it looks like we may have averted a black swan event, at least for now.
ZachXBT Gets Sued by MachiBigBrother
One of Crypto Twitter's most beloved skeptics and sleuths @zachxbt got hit with a lawsuit by Jeffrey Huang AKA @MachiBigBrother over an article published by ZachXBT in 2022.
The Nature of Huang's claim against ZachXBT is defamation as the published article contains some pretty serious allegations about the misappropriation of funds and pumping and dumping of several crypto and NFT projects over the last several years.
The context for why Huang has filed suit against XBT can be seen in the medium article linked above. It's unfortunate that this disagreement has led to civil action, and we hope there is a clean resolution. We also hope that these proceedings lead to some better accountability in the space.
Crypto News Recap
It's been an exciting week in crypto. We hope this crypto news recap has helped to catch you up on the latest in the space. We'll be back with more content soon. Don't forget to check out some of our articles below, and give us a follow on Twitter @cryptogatemedia.