Bitcoin Price: US$ 27,230.08 (+5.84%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 1,884.64 (+4.10%)
Bitcoin rallied above $27,000 as the crypto market shrugged off the SEC lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase. The recovery came after a mass sell-off triggered by the SEC’s allegations that Binance violated securities law. Despite the lawsuits, Bitcoin rose nearly 6% in the past 24 hours. Other cryptocurrencies also regained ground, although to a lesser extent. Ethereum (ETH) increased by 4.5%, while tokens like ADA and SOL rebounded after significant declines. Meanwhile, Coinbase experienced significant user withdrawals, totaling $600 million within 24 hours, following the SEC lawsuit. Binance also saw $719 million in outflows across all protocols amid the legal action. However, Binance’s stablecoin balance remained healthy, with over $8 billion in holdings.
Canadian entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary believes that the recent lawsuits by the SEC against Binance and Coinbase will mark a turning point for the cryptocurrency industry. O’Leary sees these legal actions as an opportunity to move away from the unregulated and “rogue-cowboy” environment that has characterised the industry. He views increased regulatory scrutiny as a positive development that will help shed the negative image of cryptocurrencies. In other news, FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange, is reportedly considering selling its stake in Anthropic, a rival of OpenAI. The SEC has also filed an emergency motion seeking to freeze assets held by Binance.US and requesting the repatriation of assets belonging to Binance.US customers. The motion aims to prevent the destruction or concealment of relevant records and seeks expedited discovery in the lawsuit.
Zoom, the videoconference app provider, has introduced Zoom IQ, a suite of features powered by generative AI to enhance virtual collaboration. This includes Meeting Summary and Team Chat Compose, which leverage technology from OpenAI and Anthropic to quickly summarise meetings and draft content, eliminating the need for manual review and analysis of videoconferences. Zoom also highlighted other AI contributions to its products, such as virtual backgrounds, noise suppression, high-definition audio, speech recognition, and live transcriptions and translations. In other news, Fractal, a Web3 startup and NFT marketplace founded by Twitch co-founder Justin Kan, has launched Fractal Studio (FStudio), a product designed to assist game developers in integrating crypto features into their games without requiring coding. FStudio enables developers to create and monetise in-game assets as NFTs and offer credit card payments for in-game crypto items. Furthermore, security firm Elliptic Connect has traced the stolen funds from the recent $35 million Atomic Wallet hack to a coin mixing service called Sinbad, which is also used by the North Korean hacker group Lazarus. The stolen funds are being swapped for Bitcoin before being laundered through Sinbad.
The SEC has restated its position that popular cryptocurrencies like Solana, Cardano, and Polygon are securities under U.S. law in its lawsuit against Coinbase. Additionally, the agency included more tokens in the list, such as Chiliz, Flow, Near, and Nexo. These developments followed the SEC’s lawsuit against Binance. In other news, Binance announced support for Bitcoin non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on its marketplace, despite facing the SEC lawsuit. The NFTs include Bitcoin Bandits, Bitcoin Frogs, Bitcoin Punks, and more. Furthermore, Optimism, a Layer 2 network on Ethereum, completed a scheduled upgrade called Bedrock, which brings various improvements including reduced transaction costs. The upgrade process took longer than anticipated for some aspects, but most of the core functions have already returned to the network.
Source:
https://coindesk.com
https://decrypt.co
https://theblock.co
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