Mooners and Shakers: Crypto market dumps amid macro pressures, Silvergate fallout and a lawsuit against KuCoin

The crypto market dumped pretty hard this morning (AEDT). Why? For reasons mainly macroeconomic but it’s also caught in a swirling crap storm brought about by negative Nellies pretty much all residing in the good ol’ US of A.

The Fed, Senator Elizabeth Warren, the NYAG turning on the KuCoin exchange… and that’s just for starters. Concerns around fallout surrounding the Silvergate Bank’s impending demise seems to have caught up with the market, too.

Regarding the Fed, hawkish comments from its chair, Jerome Powell, this week have shoved a 50 basis point rate hike later this month firmly back into the conversation. Ah well, it’s been nice knowing you, cushy 25bp rate-hiking level.

Also, investors are preparing for the US jobs data report, set to hit just after midnight on Saturday (AEDT). The general prognosis isn’t exactly positive for markets. Stockhead‘s Eddy Sunarto rounds up the macro situation with far more clarity in this morning’s Market Highlights.

The general upshot is, though, that Wall Street has a bit of a jittery, nervy, upset tummy, with its major indices closing well in the red on Thursday.

Elizabeth “Rabs” Warren still hates crypto

Bitcoin and crypto have followed suit, but also have some added pressures, such as the rabidly anti-crypto Democratic senator Elizabeth “Gary Gensler is my Totes Fave Regulator” Warren. The US (Massachusetts) senator is blaming the impending demise of the formerly crypto-firm-partnered Silvergate Bank on “crypto risk”.

A dip of the lid to Coin Bureau’s response there, though. His “bank run” comment refers to a letter that Warren and two anti-crypto Republican senators wrote containing numerous accusations (largely relating to the FTX implosion). Much of the crypto community believes the accusations to be based on a lack of substance and/or misinformation.

Silvergate fallout? Is Signature Bank next?

Meanwhile, as colleague Eddy reports, “Signature Bank was also down 10% after its crypto-bank peer Silvergate Capital announced plans to liquidate.

“The demise of Silvergate has now left traders with the problem of finding a new services company to help make payments and other deposit-related services.”

So where did all the US crypto firms that’ve left their partnerships with Silvergate behind turn to? Signature Bank. Here’s hoping crypto VC at QED Investors Christian Limon is correct with this assessment…

NYAG sues KuCoin, claims Ethereum is a security

And finally, before we move onto an overview of the blood-stained price action in the crypto market, there’s one more thing to briefly discuss. This:

As reported by Decrypt, among other media this morning, the New York Attorney General’s office has filed a lawsuit against the Seychelles-based crypto exchange KuCoin for allegedly violating securities and commodities laws in the state.

Per Decrypt: “In the complaint, Attorney General Letitia James makes the startling claim that not only are Terra (LUNA) and TerraUSD (UST) securities, as previously alleged by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, but also Ethereum (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.”

James would appear to be onside with the SEC boss Gary Gensler’s stance that Bitcoin is the only crypto asset that can be classified as a commodity.

The head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Rostin Behnam, however, is having none of that:

Yep, for reasons already discussed, the weekly and daily price action in the crypto majors is bloodier than the entire first season of The Last of Us.

At the time of writing, though, Bitcoin seems to have held onto a branch around US$20,300. What next? Over to you, Crypto Twitter analysts…

Uppers and downers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$8.3 billion to about US$372 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

DAILY PUMPERS

• Klaytn (KLAY), (market cap: US$666 million) +5%

• Aptos (APT), (mc: US$1.88 billion) +4%

DAILY SLUMPERS

• Huobi (AHTGIX), (market cap: US$643 million) -18%

• TRON (TRX), (mc: US$5.3 billion) -11%

• Synthetix (SNX), (mc: US$736 million) -11%

• ApeCoin (APE), (mc: US$1.6 billion) -10%

• VeChain (VET), (mc: US$1.47 billion) -9%

• SingularityNET (AGIX), (mc: US$397 million) -8%

• Fantom (FTM), (mc: US$931 million) -7%

Around the blocks

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

Hmm, more terrific news for Bitcoin here…