That’s just about it for the week in Coinheadsville. A quick price and sentiment check and a bit of a newsy round-up, and we’re outta here.

Let’s start with a vibe check, actually. And for that, we’ll defer to the market’s leading sentiment tracker, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index.

Given the Bitcoin and overall crypto market pullback over the past few days, we’re not overly surprised to see this index pull to the left and back out of the “Greed” territory.

Source: alternative.me

As for the price of Bitcoin (BTC), it’s remained remarkably flat for most of the day, clinging on by the skin of its teeth to the US$28,200 level. (News just in: it appears to be dipping lower than that now.)

Various Twittering chart watchers have been citing various technically analysed levels of support. Over the past few days, Bitcoin’s been trying to hang on to US$29k, US$28,800, $28.5k and now $28.2k.

The “don’t worry, we’re still good” key lines of support are getting lower each day. Here’s Lark Davis with a couple more.

Some other numbers for you here from Dutchman Michaël van de Poppe, for good measure.

Let’s talk about things a little more absolute…

 

Crypto news

• You might’ve heard that the European Parliament has voted to approve and pass what’s known as the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) bill, which is the European Union’s regulatory legislative proposal to oversee the crypto industry in EU member countries.

While many within the crypto industry have concerns about the finer details of the regulations and potential overreach, the consensus appears to be that this is generally good news, given the fact crypto companies within Europe will soon be able to operate with full clarity with regards to the law and what’s expected of them and their customers.

And that’s something that the US, despite SEC boss Gary Gensler’s assertions to the contrary, has been unable to so far provide.

• And just on crypto regulations – a hot topic this week in light of the Gensler grill-fest in Congress the other day – the prominent US venture capital firm Paradigm has published a policy-related article outlining the problems that crypto companies face in complying and registering with the SEC.

The piece emphasises that SEC chair Gensler’s “attempt to brute force crypto assets that may not even constitute ‘securities’ into an ill-fitting disclosure framework is bad policy.”

And that’s because, notes Paradigm, crypto users and firms simply do not have the information needed from the SEC in order to comply, with Gensler and the agency using an outdated disclosure policy that simply wasn’t built to take into account the nuances and complexities of the crypto market. It’s a compliance framework that was put together in the 1930s, you see.

Crypto assets, the VC firm notes, can be/are traded peer-to-peer without a traditional system of intermediaries, making them a completely different beast from traditional asset classes.

“Unsurprisingly, without major changes to the SEC’s current disclosure regime, the SEC is unable to effectively regulate crypto asset markets,” wrote Paradigm.

• Bitcoin proponent Robert F. Kennedy has announced his tilt at the top job in the United States of America and will run as a Democratic nomination in the 2024 presidential elections.

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.24 trillion, down about 2% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

Just a note on the biggest daily loser there – Dogecoin (DOGE). It’s come back down to earth faster than Elon Musk’s latest SpaceX rocket, which exploded four minutes after an initially successful launch. 

Believe it or not, the price of DOGE is correlated to this event, given Musk’s love for the coin. Has one man ever had so much influence on one the price of one asset? Okay, no need to answer that stupid question… this is crypto after all and the former playground of the likes of SBF and Do “Did He Really Stick a Trezor Up There?” Kwon. 

 

Around the blocks

Some pertinence and randomness that stuck with us on our morning moves through the Crypto Twitterverse.