Bitcoin’s price has fallen less than 1% to below $26,500 in the last 24 hours. The biggest digital asset remains well above the lows of around $25,500 set in a brief sell-off on Tuesday amid SEC indictments against Binance and Coinbase Global (ticker: COIN). Still, Bitcoin failed to hold Wednesday’s highs of around $27,000 and has been weakening ever since.
“Bitcoin is trading near… a level that has acted as support for the past three months. On Wednesday, the price reversed as it approached its 50-day moving average,” said Alex Kuptsikevich, an analyst at broker FxPro. “Technical picture remains quite bearish as Bitcoin remains within a 2-month downtrend channel and initiates an imminent decline towards $25,000 to test stronger support.”
The separate charging of Binance and Coinbase this week was a dramatic advance in the SEC’s tough stance on cryptocurrencies. Among other things, the agency claimed that many digital tokens are in fact unregistered securities and are illegally traded on exchanges in the United States
While it could be years before these cases reach court, public strife is already heating up. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the company will challenge the SEC in court over “clarity” and the definition of which cryptos are securities and which are not. “We have to go to court to challenge this, and we’re proud to be doing this for the industry,” Armstrong said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
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Binance, meanwhile, may be targeting SEC Chairman Gary Gensler. Binance’s law firms claimed Gensler offered to serve as an advisor to the group in 2019, CNBC reported, citing SEC filings. A Wall Street Journal report in March, citing Binance internal filings, said Binance employees had approached Gensler to become an advisor. The contrast between these claims may only be a foretaste of the dispute to come.
Alongside bitcoin, ether — the second largest cryptocurrency — fell 1% to below $1,850. Smaller cryptos or altcoins were weaker, with Cardano down 3% and Polygon down 2%. Memecoins were more muted, with Dogecoin and Shiba Inu trading almost flat.
Write to Jack Denton at [email protected]