ADVANCEMENTS IN THE CRYPTOCURRENCY WORLD

THIS WEEK IN COINS: MARKET CRASHES AS SEC SLAMS BINANCE AND COINBASE

It was a relentless week of enforcement actions by the SEC against crypto’s major players.

Crypto markets crashed hard this week on news that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had launched enforcement actions against Binance on Monday, followed by Coinbase the next day— both sued for allegedly operating as unregistered securities exchanges. The pair are the two largest crypto exchanges in the world—and the entire industry took notice.

Market leaders Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) sustained among the lighter losses among leading coins. Bitcoin depreciated by nearly 6% over the seven days to trade at $25,624 on Saturday. Ethereum fell 8.5% over the same period and currently changes hands at around $1,738.

Binance’s native BNB coin crashed 23% over the week to hit $236.

Huge losses of over 30% were felt by holders of

Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), and Polygon (MATIC). These three cryptocurrencies were all cited as securities in the SEC’s lawsuit against Binance.

Leading cryptocurrencies that lost between 20% to 30% of their value this week include Litecoin (LTC), Avalanche (AVAX), Shiba Inu (SHIB), Uniswap (UNI), Chainlink (LINK), and Cosmus Hub (ATOM).

Every unbacked cryptocurrency in the top thirty by market capitalization depreciated in value this week.

Binance immediately responded to the SEC’s lawsuit by calling the regulator “unreasonable” and claiming it is “disheartened” by the agency’s use of “blunt weapons of enforcement.”

The response of the entire market followed that day, plummeting 3.6% overnight and, in a foreboding note, Coinbase’s stock price also tumbled on news of Binance’s woes and continued to tumble when the Coinbase lawsuit hit the press the next day. Read more...