It was the second consecutive week direct losses for major cryptocurrencies.
The start of the third month of the year comes after the first two weeks of losses in 2023. Considering that the end of 2022 was a virtual free fall for the whole market, it is too early to say if the crypto has fallen back in the wood or not.
This week’s pullback appeared to be a reaction to the news that the crypto bank Silvergate delayed filing its annual 10-K report with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), sending its stock price down 31% in after-hours trading on Wednesday. Coinbase, Attachedand a plethora of other crypto companies were quick to cut their ties to the beleaguered crypto bank.
According to data from CoinGecko.
Several major currencies lost value by double-digit percentiles, including Cardano (ADA) which fell 11.1% to $0.339492, Polygon (MATIC) fell 14.4% to 5.94 $, Avalanche (AVAX) fell 15.9% to $16.51, Cosmos Hub (ATOM) depreciated 12.5% to $11.91 and Chainlink (LINK) fell 12.7% at $6.89.
Solana hasn’t fallen that far, dropping around 10.8% to $20.96 at the time of writing, despite a mysterious breakdown this week that took the network offline for 20 hours. The Solana Foundation is currently investigating The Incident.
After posting a few meteoric gains two weeks ago, the Filecoin (FILE) storage protocol token fell 21% to $6.05.
There were no significant gains among major cryptocurrencies this week.
Regulators tighten the screws
There has been a lot of talk in political circles around the world that has made crypto fans uncomfortable this week. First, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told a Bloomberg reporter on Monday that “if regulation is slow to come and crypto assets become a higher risk to consumers and potentially to stability financial”, the option to ban cryptocurrencies “should not be taken off the table.”
The French National Assembly voted on tuesday to pass a set of European Union laws, including an amendment that imposes stricter requirements on new players seeking to operate in the French crypto market. The bill now only requires the signature of President Macron to pass.
In the United States on Monday, Coinbase announced that it was delisting from BUSD, a dollar-pegged stablecoin created by rival exchange Binance. The news came two weeks after stablecoin issuer Paxos announced it would “terminate its relationship with Binance” after being sued by the SEC for issuing the stablecoin; the second accused Paxos of violating investor protection laws.
Meanwhile, the SEC’s “regulation by app” (read: crypto crackdown) strategy continued this week when Robinhood announced Tuesday that he was subpoenaed by the federal regulator for the trading app’s “supported cryptocurrencies, custody of cryptocurrencies, and platform operations.”