This week in parts. Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.
There was a limit to crypto growth this week as the market is still evaluating the effects of another possible rising interest rates of the Fed. These indications led to a strengthening of the dollar, but halted the crypto rally of the previous week, which was stimulated when Ethereum “shapella“The upgrade has gone live.
This week’s news has been a veritable feast of regulatory stories in the United States and European Union, with the drama in Washington centered on the SEC’s continued crackdown on crypto firms.1,500 to date in fact, according to a tweet posted Monday by Chairman Gary Gensler, which commemorates his second year as America’s top securities regulator.
Bitcoin and Ethereum both fell this week. Bitcoin held its head above the $30,000 mark at times but finally started falling on Wednesday, spiral down at its current level of $27,340, a decline of 10.3% from last week.
Ethereum had a similar trajectory and at times kept its head above $2,100 until the middle of the week, before dropping to $1,851, an 11.7% seven-day loss.
Many of the top thirty cryptocurrencies by market capitalization saw losses of just over 10%, including XRP, which is worth $0.456866, Cardano (ADA) is trading for $0.392358, Dogecoin (DOGE ) is $0.079389, Polygon (MATIC) is $1.01, Solana (SOL) changes hands at $21.45, Polkadot (DOT) is trading at $5.91, Litecoin (LTC) at 86 $.36, Avalanche (AVAX) at $17.16, Uniswap (UNI) is trading at $5.48, Cosmos HUB (ATOM) at $10.91 and Stellar (XLM) is trading at $0.093942 at the moment of the editorial staff.
US regulators crack down, European regulators legislate
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) crackdown on crypto firms made headlines on Monday when the agency sued another major crypto firm for alleged non-compliance with securities laws. , the Seattle-based exchange Bittrex.
In its lawsuit, the SEC named six cryptocurrencies that Bittrex allegedly offered as unregistered securities: OMG Network (OMG), Dash (DASH), Monolith (TKN), Naga (NGC), Real Estate Protocol (IHT), and Algorand (ALGO).
The drama continued on crypto Twitter where a clip of Gensler praising Algorand goes around. This is a talk Gensler gave in 2019 at the MIT Sloan Idea Exchange, a conference hosted by the school when Gensler was a professor of global economics and management there.
Several Republican lawmakers have reacted to the SEC’s enforcement strategy by submitting a condemnation letter at the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday. During the hearing, Rep. Tom Emmer grilled Gensler and said, “You’ve been an incompetent cop on the beat,” before claiming the SEC Chairman was pushing corporate America into the “hands of the CCP (The Chinese Communist Party).”
On Wednesday, the Committee turned its attention to stablecoins. Republicans and Democrats confronted on a bill, currently called the “Additional Act of 2023”. Democrat Maxine Waters said she never finished negotiations with Republican Patrick McHenry and lawmakers are now starting from scratch. Democrat Stephen Lynch also criticized part of the bill.
Good news came from the Texas legislature on Friday. The Texas House of Representatives approved a bill requiring local crypto exchanges to maintain sufficient reserves to meet all obligations to customers.
The European Union was ultimately where the most progress was made with crypto legislation this week. The European Parliament passed the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) bill with 517 votes for, 38 against and 18 abstentions, during a meeting in Strasbourg THURSDAY.
The legislation means that the bloc’s 27 member states will now take a unified approach to crypto. Companies have a year and a half to familiarize themselves with the rules. The stablecoin legislation will not come into force until July 2024 and the rest of the legislation will not be implemented until January 25th.