To catch you up, last Thursday saw a 5% decline in the BTC/USDT trading pair as a result of yet another regulatory crackdown, this time on the practice of staking.
Despite the fact that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEClatest )’s goal has no direct effect for bitcoin, confidence in the cryptocurrency markets deteriorated nonetheless, which was not helped by a subdued performance on the stock markets.
The bulls will need to exceed some resistance in Binance’s order book around US$21,820 in order to break above the crucial US$23,000 price level.
Over the weekend, Ethereum’s price fluctuated between $1,490 and $1,550 before starting the Monday session at $1,510 on the ETH/USDT exchange.
But given that Ethereum, a proof-of-stake blockchain, has much more to lose than bitcoin, the pair’s negative performance since Gensler’s staking warning on Thursday makes perfect sense.
Within the altcoin market
Since last Thursday, the CoinDesk Market Index (CMI) has dropped more than 5.5%, signaling selling pressure throughout the entire altcoin market as investors consider the shifting regulatory frontlines.
The big caps have all lost about 10% over the previous week, with Cardano (ADA), Dogecoin (DOGE), Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT), and Shiba Inu (SHIB) being the exceptions.
However, by maintaining a positive price, Tron (TRX) has beaten the market. A number of significant announcements have boosted TRX, including lower trading costs on Binance and a US$100 million AI development fund (no doubt capitalising on the groundswell of interest surrounding ChatGPT and other generative text protocols).
The Render Token (RNDR), Layer-1 protocol Stacks, and the Zilliqa (ZIL) blockchain are popular overnight riders (STX).
Total value locked (TVL) in the decentralized finance (DeF) sector dropped by 0.5 percent overnight to US$47.1 billion.
Liquid staking protocol Lido (LDO), which makes up around 17% of the whole DeFi market, continues to be the most popular DeFi protocol by TVL.