Need to know what happened in crypto today? Here is the latest news on daily trends and events impacting Bitcoin price, blockchain, DeFi, NFTs, Web3 and crypto regulation.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has denied Coinbase’s petition for rulemaking on transactions with cryptos that are classified as securities. Meanwhile, Blockstream CEO Adam Back tells Cointelegraph 2024 promises to be a resurgent period, and SafeMoon’s price dropped following its Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing.
SEC finally responds to Coinbase’s crypto rulemaking petition
The U.S. securities regulator has informed Coinbase that separate rulemaking for cryptocurrencies that are classified as securities is unnecessary because existing laws are sufficient to cover the asset class.
SEC chair Gary Gensler announced the commission’s response to Coinbase’s petition, filed in July 2022, on Dec. 15. He argued that existing rules already apply to crypto.
“There is nothing about the crypto securities markets that suggests that investors and issuers are less deserving of the protections of our securities laws,” Gensler said in a statement.
Gensler also said the SEC is already soliciting comments on crypto-specific rules, making Coinbase’s petition redundant and unnecessary.
And now @coinbase will sue the SEC over this decision. https://t.co/pxIvmCK41V pic.twitter.com/mi0ezkziOu
— Bill Hughes : wchughes.eth (@BillHughesDC) December 15, 2023
Meanwhile, the SEC has been busy meeting with institutions vying for a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. Based on court filings, the SEC met with regulators from BlackRock on Dec. 14. Last week, the regulator met with Grayscale and Franklin Templeton to review with respective applications.
$100K BTC? Don’t undervalue Bitcoin ETF influence, says Adam Back
The COVID-19 pandemic, rampant inflation and regional conflicts directly influenced Bitcoin’s drop in value over the past two years. However, 2024 promises to be a resurgent period, according to Blockstream CEO Adam Back.
The cryptographer, who pioneered the proof-of-work algorithm applied in Bitcoin’s protocol, tells Cointelegraph that the preeminent cryptocurrency is trailing below the historical price trend line of previous mining reward halving events.
Back weighed in on the potential price action of Bitcoin as the next halving approaches, which will see Bitcoin miners’ block reward reduced from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Block reward halvings are programmatically hardwired into Bitcoin’s code, taking place after every 210,000 blocks.
Back says that the overlaid averages of the previous market cycles and halvings indicate that Bitcoin’s relative value is trailing behind widely accepted projections. Multiple events have played a role in driving the price of BTC down, which has also been seen across traditional financial markets:
“The last few years were like biblical pestilence and plague. There was COVID-19, quantitative easing and wars affecting power prices. Inflation running up people, companies are going bankrupt.”
The impact has keenly affected markets and portfolio management, according to Back. Investment managers have had to manage risk and losses over the past few years, which has necessitated the sale of more liquid assets.
“They have to come up with cash, and sometimes they’ll sell the good stuff because it’s liquid and Bitcoin is super liquid. It used to happen with gold, and I think that’s a factor for Bitcoin in the last couple of years,” Back explains.
SafeMoon falls 31% in five hours after filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy
The token of decentralized finance protocol SafeMoon (SFM) has fallen 31% in five hours after the company filed for bankruptcy.
Safemoon officially applied for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, also known as “liquidation bankruptcy,” in a Dec. 14 filing to the United States Bankruptcy Court in the District of Utah. The voluntary petition was filed by attorney Mark Rose, with Chief Judge Joel T. Marker assigned to the case.
Game over #Safemoon
Sorry to all that lost on safemoon including myself, such a real shame because the community is what made safemoon.
Since the LP is on the safemoon swap it’s over as there’s only around $5k LP on pcs.#SafemoonArmy pic.twitter.com/zg4fmIJrYy— DefiStella.eth (@DefiStella) December 14, 2023
A screenshot of a letter to employees purportedly written by the firm’s chief restructuring officer surfaced on Reddit, explaining that its bankruptcy run was why it was no longer able to pay employee wages prior to the filing.
The latest blow comes only a month after the United States securities regulator charged SafeMoon, its founder Kyle Nagy, CEO John Karony, and CTO Thomas Smith in November for violating securities laws in what the regulator described as “a massive fraudulent scheme.”
The cryptocurrency fell from $0.000065 on Dec. 14 at 8:24pm UTC to $0.000045 over a five-hour period after the news, according to CoinGecko. It did, however rebounded back to $0.000061 in a rapid-fire 10 minute span.
Source: Cointelegraph.com
