Today, we saw a bit of a stabilization in the cryptocurrency market led by Bitcoin which is still at the 26,000 level after the sharp decline over the past weekend. Also today, Ethereum is settling near the $1,640 level.
We continue to see mixed news moving the cryptocurrency market. Where we have seen the return of cryptocurrency outflows during the last week. According to data provided by Coinshares, the cryptocurrency market recorded an outflow of $55 million over the past week, while Bitcoin took the lead with about $42 million in outflows.
At the same time and during the past week, we have seen the emergence of a relatively huge wallet for bitcoin holding 118,300 units of Bitcoin with an estimated value of about $3 billion, while the owner of this 3rd largest Bitcoin wallet remains unknown with speculation of ownership of the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini or the largest asset manager in the world, BlackRock, which it applied earlier to launch a spot Bitcoin ETF.
Also, in response to increasing regularity tightening in the United States, Binance.US announced its partnership with cryptocurrency service provider MoonPay. This allows customers to fund their accounts with the stablecoin Tether USD instead of US dollars, with Binance.US having difficulty offering bank deposit services due to regulatory concerns following the lawsuits the platform faced.
On the positive side, we have heard rumors about Robinhood’s intention to list XRP, the main currency of the Ripple network. This comes after the partial victory achieved by Ripple Lab following the lawsuits filed against it by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). While this listing could be very important for XRP given Robinhood’s reputation for listing only highly qualified cryptocurrencies.
I believe that developments on the regulatory and legal side, especially in the US, will continue to dominate the focus of cryptocurrency traders for at least the next few weeks. As regulatory concerns may continue to dampen institutional investor confidence around cryptocurrencies. Also, the increase in the concentration of holdings of cryptocurrencies in the hands of a few individuals may also continue to weaken confidence in cryptocurrencies as an investment asset due to the violent fluctuations that currencies may witness in the event that large investors carry out huge selling operations, which we have seen on many occasions previously.
Also published on Medium.
