After a week of adverse regulatory news and macroeconomic events, bitcoin has held fairly strong. The cryptocurrency is up 3% on the week and has managed to hold the $28,000 mark on Friday after reaching highs of $28,700 earlier in the week. Ether gained 2% on the day and reached $1,800 earlier in the week for the first time since August. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday urged investors to exercise caution when investing in crypto assets and issued a Wells notice to crypto exchange Coinbase earlier in the week. Coinbase’s stock slumped as much as 20% in early trading Thursday following the news.
Bitcoin reached $28,708 earlier in the week. (CoinDesk)
Federal prosecutors in New York charged Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon with fraud hours after he was arrested by police in Montenegro. “Montenegrin police have detained a person suspected of being one of the most wanted fugitives, South Korean citizen Do Kwon, co-founder and CEO of Singapore-based Terraform Labs,” Montenegro’s minister of interior, Filip Adzic, tweeted Thursday. Kwon has been the target of several investigations and was even on Interpol’s red notice after stablecoin terraUSD (UST) and its $40 billion ecosystem imploded last year, sending shockwaves across the crypto markets.
Some Binance employees and trained “volunteers” are helping users in China and other countries evade Binance’s Know Your Customer (KYC) controls, CNBC reported Wednesday, citing Chinese-language messages from a Binance-controlled Discord server and Telegram group. The message group participants, called “Angels,” share techniques such as forging bank documents, falsifying addresses and hiding the country of origin to allow users to bypass controls and obtain a Binance debit card, according to the report. China banned crypto exchanges in 2017, and cryptocurrencies altogether in 2021.
Market Insight: Bitcoin, Ether Diverge
In the aftermath of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s interest rate increase, what stands out more than the immediate reaction in bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) pricing is their performance relative to each other in recent weeks.
The two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, which have been tightly correlated throughout much of their histories, have differed in performance this year. That difference has accelerated since the middle of this month. The ETH/BTC pair has declined 17% since mid-January and 11% since March 12
BTC and ETH have had different levels of success in 2023, with BTC increasing in price by 65% and ETH rising an impressive but less robust 45% for the year to date. The disparity between the two highlights the resilience of one and the potential opportunity in the other.
The chart shows liquidity in the bitcoin market, as measured by a metric called the 2% market depth – a collection of buy and sell orders within 2% of the mid-price.
The market depth has dropped to ten-month lows, indicating a tough time for traders looking to execute large buy and sell orders at stable prices.
“The closure of Silvergate exchange network and wind-down of Signature bank’s real-time crypto payment network, some of the only USD payment rails for crypto, resulted in U.S exchanges being harder hit from a liquidity standpoint as market makers in the region face unprecedented challenges to their operations,” Connor Ryder, research analyst at Kaiko, wrote in a market update.
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Disclaimer: The information presented in this message is intended as a news item that provides a brief summary of various events and developments that affect, or that might in the future affect, the value of one or more of the cryptocurrencies described above. The information contained in this message, and any information liked through the items contained herein, is not intended to provide sufficient information to form the basis for an investment decision. The information presented herein is accurate only as of its date, and it was not prepared by a research analyst or other investment professional. You should seek additional information regarding the merits and risks of investing in any cryptocurrency before deciding to purchase or sell any such instruments.
