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SEC lawsuit has crypto markets reeling
The crypto industry’s latest blow rocked digital asset prices on Monday.
Bitcoin was recently trading at about $25,750, down nearly 5% over the past 24 hours. Much of its initial downturn occurring in the two hours after the Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC) filed suit against Binance, accusing the exchange giant of violating securities laws. The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization treaded comfortably above $27,000 for much of the past week, but the allegations against Binance rekindled fears about industry integrity and the intent of regulators to exert more control over exchanges. Binance – and other exchanges – have been facing regulatory scrutiny for years.
The Binance news obviously led to a big sell-off, but the news itself wasn’t exactly surprising,” Bob Ras, co-founder of Sologenic, a blockchain-powered network for tokenizing securities, told CoinDesk. “Rumors had been swirling for some time about forthcoming action against Binance.”
But Ras added that he wasn’t convinced “that we are going to experience massive liquidations,” similar to those following the 2022 implosions of Luna, Celsius and FTX. “Back then, we saw a great many forced sellers. I don’t think there are nearly as many forced sellers now as there were back then. I suspect that we’ll likely be in for a gradual recovery here.”
