Wall Street dipped, too, but Bitcoin and the crypto market dropped a little harder. And that’s possibly due to a couple of extra notes of negativity – 1) major US exchange Coinbase has received another nasty letter from the SEC, and 2) Joe Biden and pals officially don’t like crypto.

Yep, hopium for a Fed pivot or a pause – likely fuel for a crypto moon mission – had spread right across the crypto landscape. That said, more realistically, the Fed’s 25bps hike was largely expected.

What was a bit confusing, or perhaps encouraging actually, was some of Fed chair Jerome Powell’s post-FOMC meeting presser tone.

Not sure when the price of Bitcoin might want take this into account, but a stressed-out-looking-and-sounding Powell seemed to indicate that this rate hike could be one of the last for the time being.

“Events in the banking system over the past two weeks are likely to result in tighter credit conditions for households and businesses, which would in turn affect economic outcomes,” noted the Fed boss, adding:

“It is too soon to determine the extent of these effects, and therefore too soon to tell how monetary policy should respond.

“As a result, we no longer state that we anticipate that ongoing rate increases will be appropriate to quell inflation. Instead, we now anticipate that some additional policy firming may be appropriate.”

That oughta give at least some Crypto Rebellion hope for a pivot this year… r… right?

Stockhead‘s very own, non-fungible Eddy Sunarto has more details on the Fed’s latest actions, and several other matters of high pertinence, over at this morning’s must-read Market Highlights – including news that certain crypto influencers have this week come under the SEC’s radar.

One of those, is Justin “His Excellency” Sun, the Chinese founder of Ethereum wannabe TRON (turned Grenadian diplomat), who faces allegations of fraud and securities violations including trading manipulation.

Justin Sun-related cryptos TRON (TRX) and Huobi (HT), unsurprisingly have taken a big hit overnight. (See “SLUMPERS”, below.)

 

Coinbase targeted by the SEC

The Justin Sun news is perhaps not much of a surprise to many in the crypto space as rumours regarding some sort of impending enforcement action on him have been swirling for months.

But as for today’s Coinbase revelation, there’s no way to sugarcoat it. It’s further confirmation, if it was needed, that Gary “Wyatt Earp” Gensler’s SEC and the Joe “Is it Time For My Pills?” Biden administration plans to run inhabitants of the US crypto-staking saloon right outta town.

America’s leading crypto exchange, and one of the very biggest globally, has been slapped with a Wells Notice from the SEC that targets the firm for allegedly offering unregistered securities with regards to its staking products. The notice also mentions “aspects of Coinbase’s exchange… and Coinbase Wallet.”

This smackdown comes about a month after the SEC fined Coinbase rival Kraken US$30 million for offering the same thing – staking. Gensler sure doesn’t seem to like Americans earning passive income on their digital assets.

Excellent Brooklyn-based crypto-media outlet Decrypt reports that “a person familiar with the matter” told them that Coinbase is “confident it will be able to defend its position in court”.

The source also indicated that Coinbase is frustrated that the SEC has allowed American investors to participate in crypto for years before “suddenly deciding to pull the rug out”.

The person also said that, “Stacy likes Jimmy, shhh… pass it on.” Possibly.

Meanwhile, the US government has issued an economic report that proves it’s switched its tone from “We’re not yet sure how to handle crypto” to “This stuff is dangerous and risky and threatens our messed-up financial establishment and the almighty US dollar… and… and… I just don’t like it or understand it… and yeah, what Elizabeth Warren said.”

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.19 trillion, down about 2.6% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

So, yep, the shuttle bus to the launchpad has broken down, but this could be worse. At least it wasn’t a 50bps hike. And the Coinbase targeting? Bitcoin and crypto will survive it. Even if the US crypto industry has to move offshore to ride out this seemingly innovation-unfriendly Biden administration. 

Bitcoin is travelling okay for now and has actually picked itself up pretty well off the US$27k canvas, which is where it lay battered when we began tapping the keyboard this morn. And zooming out a tad, it’s still up 11% over the weekly timeframe. 

XRP, meanwhile, is the big daily loser in the top 10, down 8.7%. We made a nod to some hefty whale action regarding the token’s price action yesterday.

So, yes, while there has been a lot of hopeful sentiment for a an impending settlement in Ripple Labs’ legal stoush with the SEC, this token serves as a reminder to stay aware of the extreme daily fluctuations of altcoins right now.

It’s not uncommon at the moment to see tokens that have pumped the day before, pull right back again less than 24 hours later. Guess it’s called volatility, that.

If only there was some sort of theme-park-ride analogy for the ups and downs of crypto trading and investing that also reflected life in general…

 

Uppers and downers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$8.27 billion to about US$403 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.)

PUMPERS

• Aptos (APT), (market cap: US$2.31 billion) +7%

• Litecoin (LTC), (mc: US$6.36 billion) +6%

• SingularityNET (AGIX), (mc: US$598 million) +4%

• Render (RNDR), (mc: US$504 million) +3%

• Stacks (STX), (mc: US$1.61 billion) +3%

 

SLUMPERS

• TRON (TRX), (market cap: US$5.48 billion) -11%

• Huobi (HT), (mc: US$594 million) -11%

• EOS (EOS), (mc: US$1.21 billion) -8%

• Flow (FLOW), (mc: US$1 billion) -8%

• ImmutableX (IMX), (mc: US$1 billion) -8%

 

Around the blocks

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

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