Cryptocurrency Market Overview 04.10.2023
News block
1. Important news on Ripple
After the defeat in court, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a motion for appeal in the case against Ripple. However, yesterday District Judge Analisa Torres rejected the SEC's proposal, arguing that the Commission did not provide substantial grounds for this.
This decision is not a complete victory for Ripple. Earlier, the court set a date for the continuation of the trial for April 2024 on other issues that still need to be resolved (direct sale of XRP to institutional investors, here Ripple may face a fine).
The most important thing is that the XRP token is definitely not a security! There will be no appeal.
At the same time, the Ripple company itself continues to actively develop. So her Singaporean daughter Ripple Markets APAC Pte Ltd yesterday received a full license of a Large Payment Institution (MPI) from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to provide digital payment token services in Singapore.
2. Is China Becoming More Loyal to Cryptocurrencies?
According to a new Chainalysis report, mainland China may have access to digital assets thanks to the over-the-counter cryptocurrency market in Hong Kong.
"The increasingly close relationship between China and Hong Kong leads some to speculate that Hong Kong's growing status as a crypto center may signal that the Chinese government is changing course on digital assets, or at least becoming more open to crypto-initiatives," Chainalysis analysts point out.
The report says that Hong Kong ranked fifth in terms of cryptocurrency transactions (about $64 billion) in East Asia between July 2022 and June 2023.
Recent events "have given rise to rumors that the Chinese government may get closer to cryptocurrency and that Hong Kong may become a testing ground for these efforts," the report says. "Hong Kong functions as a special administrative region of China, which means that it has autonomy in many aspects of politics, including the regulation of cryptocurrencies."
3. Class action lawsuit against Binance
Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao were accused in a class action lawsuit of unfair competition and violations of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules.
The lawsuit alleges that Binance's actions were aimed at monopolizing the cryptocurrency market by intentionally harming competing trading platforms, in particular FTX.
The lawsuit was filed in the Northern District Court of California and points to a series of actions that began with Zhao's publication on the social network on November 6 last year, where he announced the liquidation of the remaining FTX tokens (FTT) from Binance. The move came a day after Binance had already allegedly sold FTT worth about $530 million, which led to a 14% drop in the token price in 24 hours.
According to the complaint, these actions led to the rapid collapse and bankruptcy of FTX, resulting in financial losses of its customers in the billions.
The pressure on Binance continues to grow. A number of investigations are currently underway against the exchange. If you keep your assets on Binance, then you should withdraw them to your personal wallet!
4. The Canadian TMX exchange will add BTC futures
TMX Group, the largest Canadian exchange, has announced that its derivatives trading platform will soon introduce futures contracts for BTC.
"The Montreal Exchange is launching bitcoin futures to meet the growing market demand for digital cryptocurrency asset classes," the press release says.
Overview of the crypto market
🔸 The current capitalization of the crypto market is $1,120 trillion
🔸 Trading volume for the last day is $38.56 billion
🔸 BTC dominance 47.6%
🔸 Fear and greed index:
- 49 today, 50 yesterday, 46 a week ago
where 0 is extreme fear (may be a sign that investors are too scared - often it's a good time to buy), and 100 is extreme greed (the market needs correction).
Over the past day, only individual assets have shown growth in the crypto market (XRP is growing by 4% amid positive news about the rejection of the SEC appeal). The broader market is showing a decline, including the leading cryptocurrencies — BTC and ETH.
It should be noted that due to the increase in the price of digital assets, which occurred on Monday, the inflows of cryptocurrencies to the exchanges increased. So the admission of 14,924 BTC to the Kraken exchange deserves special attention — this is a record for this exchange since 2018:
It is clear that some investors are moving to profit-taking.
Conflux: partnership with LayerZero
Conflux (CFX), the only public blockchain in China that meets regulatory requirements, and the LayerZero inter-network messaging protocol have announced cooperation in the development of a blockchain-based SIM card (BSIM).
Conflux and China Telecom have been working on the creation of BSIM since February 2023. The LayerZero project should provide users of such SIM cards with the ability to transfer digital assets and messages between different blockchains.
It is planned that the new type of SIM cards will be tested in Hong Kong later this year, and then deployed in China.
BSIM developers hope to attract some of China Telecom's 390 million users.
