Bitcoin and the crypto market are having a green resurgence today, amid mixed signals from SEC Chairman Gary Gensler and various other bullish and bearish technicals and fundamentals.
Gary Gensler, or “GG” as no one else seems to call him, has been causing a stir as he earns his keep this week, making speeches and doing media rounds with highly quotable sound bites related to crypto.
“Nakamoto’s innovation is real,” said the US Securities and Exchange Commission chairman in an interview with the Aspen Security Forum on Tuesday. He was of course referring to Bitcoin and its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
“I really do think there’s something real about the distributed ledger technology, moving value on the internet,” GG added.
This is the type of affirming language the crypto world has been waiting to hear from Gensler, a former digital currency and cryptography educator at the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). And while perhaps the market’s reaction was initially slow, Gensler’s crypto bone throw may be a contributing factor to the rally we’ve been seeing in the past eight hours or so.
That said, it hasn’t been all sunshine, rainbows and unicorns from the SEC chairman. Some of his other statements may have been giving the market some mixed feelings to process leading into Wednesday.
There has been plenty of cautionary rhetoric thrown into the mix about crypto and consumer protection from Gensler, as well as the question of whether many cryptos will need to be classified as securities.
In a conversation on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Gensler said that many crypto trading and lending platforms are “standing astride regulation”.
“If they’re trading securities, I’m encouraging them to come in and have a frank discussion,” said the SEC head.
Novogratz and others unimpressed with US policy pushers
Meanwhile, Mike Novogratz, the CEO of Galaxy Digital, has been hitting Twitter with his views on recent regulatory rumblings from those who view crypto as being filled with nothing more than “shadowy super coders“.
Novogratz’s comments come after the regulatory narrative caused a bit of uncertainty in the market early this week, with a contentious crypto-reporting provision in a US$1 billion infrastructure bill being debated in the US Senate.
Republican Senator Pat Toomey has also publicly criticised the infrastructure bill and its proposed crypto-tax reporting clauses, calling them “unworkable” in a press statement yesterday. He has pledged to get the bill amended, according to a Coindesk article.
Also in the news: FTX, Google ads, Rothschild, Binance and Popsicle
• Crypto exchange FTX is launching an NFT sports platform and backing the LCS esports league for Riot Games’ League of Legends. FTX continues its big moves into US sports.
• After a lengthy ban, Google is conditionally allowing cryptocurrency ads once more, including exchange and wallet promotions.
• The huge British investment banking firm Rothschild Investment Trust (RIT Capital Partners) has led a funding round for Aspen Digital, a crypto investment platform.
• Binance is bringing crypto payments to e-commerce platform Shopify in a new partnership with crypto-fiat gateway Alchemy Pay, according to a joint press release.
• DeFi project Popsicle Finance (ICE) suffered a damaging exploit today, which saw US$20.7 million drain from one of its liquidity pools. ICE is down 38.4% in the past 24 hours.
Mooners and shakers: BTC and ETH leading a green day
At the time of writing, the entire crypto market is up 4% in the past 24 hours, with the Coin360 market overview chart looking more verdant by the minute.
Bitcoin (BTC) is up 3.04%, having recaptured the $US39K level for now. Ethereum (ETH) is faring even better, up 6.87% and moving strongly along the road to its imminent London hard fork.
Some traders and investors, however, were considering a “buy the rumour, sell the news” strategy regarding the no.2 crypto and its big fundamental happenings over the next 24 hours.
Not everyone was swallowing that theory, though…
Some of the more notable gainers in the past 24 hours include: Mina Protocol (MINA) +43.9%; Quant (QNT) +18.5%; Axie Infinity (AXS) +14.9%; THORChain +14.6%; and Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) +14.4%.
In addition to Popsicle Finance, mentioned in the news bites section further above, we’ve got time for one other loser in the past 24 hours. And that’s Stacks (STX), which is -2.19%, having recovered somewhat from a reasonably sharp sell-off earlier in the day.
Stacks had initially pumped this week, which can be attributed to its yield-enabling connection with MiamiCoin (MIA), being touted by the City of Miami and its crypto-loving mayor Francis Suarez.