Cryptocurrencies plunged over the past 24 hours amidst renewed regulatory action by the U.S. SEC. Charges filed by the SEC against Coinbase and Binance impacted market sentiment with overall crypto market capitalization plunging more than 3 percent overnight.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday charged Coinbase for operating as an unregistered securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency. Coinbase has also been charged for the unregistered offer and sale of securities in connection with its staking-as-a-service program.
The SEC has alleged that Coinbase intertwined the traditional services of an exchange, broker, and clearing agency without having registered any of those functions with the Commission as required by law.
The SEC has also charged that Coinbase has made available for trading assets that are offered and sold as securities. This includes but is not limited to 9th ranked Solana (SOL), 7th ranked Cardano (ADA), 10th ranked Polygon (MATIC), 32nd ranked Filecoin (FIL), 44th ranked The Sandbox (SAND), 57th ranked Axie Infinity (AXS), 63rd ranked Chiliz (CHZ), 60th ranked Flow (FLOW), 31st ranked Internet Computer (ICP), 38th ranked NEAR Protocol (NEAR), 439th ranked Voyager Token (VGX), 86th ranked Dash (DASH) and 92nd ranked Nexo (NEXO).
Shares of Coinbase Global, Inc. (COIN) are currently trading at $50.66, down $8.05 or 13.70 percent from the previous close.
The SEC had earlier on Monday filed 13 charges against Binance entities viz Binance Holdings Ltd. which operates the largest crypto asset trading platform in the world, Binance.com; U.S.-based affiliate, BAM Trading Services Inc., which, together with Binance, operates the crypto asset trading platform, Binance.US; and their founder, Changpeng Zhao, with a variety of securities law violations. Charges include operating unregistered exchanges, broker-dealers, and clearing agencies; misrepresenting trading controls and oversight on the Binance.US platform; and the unregistered offer and sale of securities.
Among other things, the SEC has alleged that, while Zhao and Binance publicly claimed that U.S. customers were restricted from transacting on Binance.com, Zhao and Binance in reality subverted their own controls to secretly allow high-value U.S. customers to continue trading on the Binance.com platform. Further, the SEC has alleged that, while Zhao and Binance publicly claimed that Binance.US was created as a separate, independent trading platform for U.S. investors, Zhao and Binance secretly controlled the Binance.US platform’s operations behind the scenes.
The SEC’s complaint alleges that with respect to Binance.com, Binance should have registered as an exchange, broker-dealer, and clearing agency. With respect to Binance.US, the SEC alleges that Binance and BAM Trading should have registered as an exchange and as clearing agencies. Further BAM Trading, according to the SEC should have registered as a broker-dealer. The SEC also alleges that Zhao was liable as a control person for Binance’s and BAM Trading’s respective registration violations.
The SEC also charged Binance for the unregistered offers and sales of BNB, BUSD, and crypto-lending products known as “Simple Earn” and “BNB Vault.” Further, the SEC charged BAM Trading with the unregistered offer and sale of Binance.US’ staking-as-a-service program. The complaint also noted that Binance secretly had control over assets staked by U.S. customers in BAM’s staking program.
4th ranked BNB (BNB) has shed 6.9 percent overnight to trade at $279.07.
Overall crypto market capitalization is currently at $1.1 trillion, versus $1.13 trillion a day earlier. More than 90 percent of the top 100 cryptocurrencies are trading with overnight losses.
45th ranked The Sandbox (SAND) tops overnight losses with a decline of more than 15 percent. SAND has been named in the Coinbase lawsuit as meeting the definition of a security.
44th ranked optimism (OP) withstood the market turbulence to rise more than 6 percent in the past 24 hours.
Bitcoin is currently trading at $25,985.63, having erased 3 percent over the past 24 hours. The 24-hour trading range was between $26,810.22 and $25,434.87.
Ethereum has lost 1.7 percent in the past 24 hours and is currently changing hands at $1,835.27. Ether ranged between $1,868.57 and $1,780.21 in the past 24 hours.
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