Ding! Ding! Round two. The SEC has doubled down in the space of two days, charging America’s biggest crypto exchange, Coinbase, with securities violations, a day after throwing similar accusations at Binance.

What fun for crypto HODLers everywhere, never mind just in the US, of A, eh? Good one, Gazza Gensler. Thanks a bleeding lot. And yet… and yet… the bleeding out on this one hasn’t yet come.

In fact, if you thought Bitcoin and the crypto market had held on bravely to a crucial level of support yesterday you’d be right, but it’s somehow, epically, managed to climb to a higher branch while being pelted with a fresh batch of rocks.

Well either that, or it’s gone something like this…

That there is John James Crypto what jumped off of that cliff into that tree and threw that rock, hitting that SEC chopper, that is. “They drew first blood… they drew first blood…”

Sorry, daydreaming…

So what actually has happened with the SEC and Coinbase overnight, then? Frankly, in spite of the perversely positive price action on the back of it all, it’s pretty crap news for the crypto industry in the US. At least in the short to midterm.

Following its similar action against the Binance exchange in America yesterday, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a lawsuit against the nation’s biggest crypto exchange – Coinbase – for allegedly offering unregistered securities on its platform.

Gary Gensler and pals contend that Coinbase is acting as an unregistered broker, national securities exchange and clearing agency, and is offering its customers in the US several unregistered securities in the form of tokens that it says includes:

Solana (SOL); Polygon (MATIC); Cardano (ADA); Filecoin (FIL); The Sandbox (SAND); Axie Infinity (AXS); Chiliz (CHZ); Flow (FLOW); Internet Computer (ICP); Near (NEAR); Voyager Token (VGX); Dash (DASH) and Nexo (NEXO).

Why mention that lot and not Ethereum and XRP, for instance? That might have something to do with the agency not wishing to muddy the waters in its litigation case with Ripple.

That lawsuit focuses on the sale of XRP as an alleged unregistered security but also brings into play Ethereum, which could prove to be a crucial part of that plotline, with regards to former high-ranking SEC exec William Hinman’s 2018 speech in which he claimed ETH was not, in fact, a security.

In any case, the crypto industry across Twitter has been abuzz with the Coinbase-related body blow on the back of the left hook to Binance.

If you have the time, this Twitter Spaces “townhall” hosted by Scott “The Wolf of All Streets” Melker is worth tuning into, although it was on in the wee hours last night in Australia and this writer fell asleep listening.

Here’s a couple of bits and pieces of what we did catch:

• Wolf of All Streets: “It’s all-out war on crypto in the United States.”

• Former Goldman Sachs man turned macro/crypto analyst Raoul Pal: “We knew this was coming, there’s nothing new here. It’s designed to slow everything down, but ultimately the market will go higher.

“Their [the SEC’s] tactic is to create as much uncertainty as possible. It’s done on purpose. The last thing they want is to give regularity clarity.

“But I think it’s still a bull market, and it looks just like all the others at this point.”

Meanwhile, here’s crypto commentator Chris Blec bringing the probable truth…

And here’s crypto/tech-friendly lawyer Jake Chervinsky with another insightful take, referring to the fact that Coinbase, under the current SEC bosses’ watch, became a registered IPO allowing it to be listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange and selling its COIN stock to retail investors.

“The outrage is justified,” noted Chervinsky. “But the relief is justified, too,” he added, possibly referring to the surprising positive price action on the back of this latest news.

Here are some more crypto-community-at-large reactions we caught late last night…

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at US$1.18 trillion, miraculously up about 4.3% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

It’s slightly surprising to see the market somewhat rally, although a quick check of Eddy’s Market Highlights this morn tells us Wall Street closed in the green with some techy stocks faring quite well.

What’s less surprising within that context, is the fact that decentralised-tastic Bitcoin (BTC), which is the ONLY crypto asset that the SEC pretty much cannot claim to be a security (largely based on the fact they have absolutely no Bitcoin CEO to serve their pernickety papers to), is the best performer in the majors today so far.

That said, Dogecoin (DOGE) is not far behind it, hilariously enough. And why would that be? Oh yeah, a certain Tweet-happy tech billionaire. Again. (See below.)

Meanwhile, what are some “told-you-so” Crypto Twittering technical analytical traders seeing in the tea leaves now?

 

Uppers and downers

Some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time. (Stats accurate at time of publishing, based on CoinGecko.com data.)

PUMPERS (11-100 market cap position)

• Pepe (PEPE), (market cap: US$508 million) +16%

• ApeCoin (APE), (market cap: US$1.14 billion) +10%

• Stacks (STX), (market cap: US$827 million) +8%

• Lido DAO (LDO), (market cap: US$2.12 billion) +8%

• Radix (XRD), (market cap: US$713 million) +8%

• Optimism (OP), (market cap: US$962 million) +8%

 

SLUMPERS

• BitTorrent (BTT), (market cap: US$511 million) -2%

• Algorand (ALGO), (mc: US$998 million) -1%

 

Around the blocks

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

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