By James Davis
Over the past seven days, the crypto market has been relatively quiet. The loudest noise was only heard last Tuesday when the court ordered the review of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) decision to deny a spot Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) application submitted by crypto asset management firm Grayscale. The court said the regulator failed to explain its decision comprehensively.
Following the news, the crypto market rallied significantly. However, it wasn’t long before digital currencies gave away their gains as reports emerged that the SEC was planning to delay its verdict on the multiple spot Bitcoin ETF applications from major asset managers like BlackRock and Valkyrie.
Bloomberg’s ETF guru, James Seyffart, shared the news on his X account. He said the SEC had decided to delay its decision on the seven ETF filings for 45 days. It is still unclear why the regulator chose to take that route.
Meanwhile, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce shared a link to her statement regarding the latest NFT enforcement action imposed by the agency on Impact Theory. Peirce disapproved the SEC’s action while defending Impact Theory, saying that the company did not sell unregistered securities in the form of its NFT as the agency claimed. This is not the first time the commissioner has disagreed with the SEC. In April this year, she condemned the regulator’s proposal to modify the “exchange” definition in an effort to regulate crypto exchanges.
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USDC Experiences High Redemptions
On Monday, X user and crypto enthusiast @oxSisyphus disclosed the increasing redemption rate on Circle’s USDC stablecoin. He said the second-biggest stablecoin has been losing over $30 million daily to net outflows over the last 30 days. USDC’s market cap has dropped to $26 billion, a level it touched last in July 2021. Moreover, it is down 53% from its all-time high of $56.1 billion.
That day, The Block’s crypto analyst Rebecca Stevens shared insights into the declining dominance of USDC on the Ethereum blockchain. The stablecoin’s supply dominance dropped from 45% at the start of the year to 32% as of September 1. The drop is largely attributed to the depegging incident in March. Circle, in collaboration with Coinbase, now plans to grow USDC by expanding it to six new blockchains.
On Tuesday, UK-based Bitcoin mining expert Anthony Power posted a summary of the miners’ revenues for this year’s second quarter. Core Scientific recorded the most earnings ($126.9 million). However, the mining company posted a $9.6 million loss.
Later that day, crypto lawyer Stephen Palley announced that a New York-based court threw out the lawsuit brought against the Uniswap decentralized exchange. The complainants behind the lawsuit wanted Uniswap to be held liable for damages caused by third parties that misuse the platform’s code.
StarkWave Users Who Failed to Update Wallets Lose Access to Funds
The following day, @oxSisyphus noticed an unfortunate incident that happened to StarkWave users. According to the crypto fan, all users who failed to upgrade their wallets to the latest contracts by August 21 saw their crypto balances go down to zero. The screenshot from a Discord chat shared by @oxSisyphus suggests that the old wallets are no longer accessible.
Later on Wednesday, crypto-friendly Presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy joined crypto players in celebrating Grayscale’s victory against Gary Gensler’s SEC. Ramaswamy said the court’s decision would fuel blockchain innovations in the US. He added that he will fight for clear crypto regulations when he gets to office.
Meanwhile, crypto exchange Bitfinex launched a BNB perpetual contact on August 30. The founder of crypto asset management firm Ikigai, Travis Kling, wondered why the exchange had waited until 2023 to launch the product despite BNB being in existence for the last six years. One X user (@mszx98) commented, “The dump will be magnificent.”
On Friday, crypto journalist Colin Wu reported that the Chinese court news website, China Court Daily, had posted an article suggesting that cryptocurrencies are legal property in China and, therefore, should be protected by law.