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  • Bitcoin surged above $29,900 in the early hours of Wednesday following a MicroStrategy announcement to offer $750 million in stock for sale, with the proceeds earmarked to acquire additional bitcoin.
  • The CRV has shown a recent increase of 5.4%, and it is currently trading close to 60 cents, having previously dropped below 50 cents on Tuesday.

 

As Asia initiated its business day, Bitcoin surged beyond $29,900 following a filing by MicroStrategy, a software developer and Bitcoin whale, with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The filing disclosed their plans to sell up to $750 million in stock, with the specific purpose of utilizing the proceeds to acquire more BTC.

The leading cryptocurrency, with the highest market capitalization, was observed to be trading at $29,900, reflecting a significant gain of over 2% during the last four hours. Moreover, it has surged by more than 4.6% since reaching a low of $28,574 on Tuesday. MicroStrategy's Chairman and avid bitcoin advocate, Michael Saylor, has been at the forefront of the company's strategic investments in bitcoin, amounting to billions of dollars since the onset of the pandemic.

Bitcoin experienced a prior decline due to a market downturn triggered by the aftermath of a Curve exploit during the weekend. Recently, CRV showed resilience and surged by 7.6% from Tuesday, trading just below 60 cents. On Tuesday, CRV recorded a significant 20% increase after briefly dropping below 50 cents. This upward trend was fueled by Sun's purchase of over $2 million worth of the CRV token, alongside a commitment to provide further support through a liquidity pool on the Tron network.

Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value, was recently trading at $1,873, experiencing a slight decrease of 0.6% compared to the same time on Tuesday. On the other hand, SOL and ADA, the tokens of smart contract platforms Solana and Cardano, respectively, were both showing positive gains, surpassing a percentage point in the green. Surprisingly, Ripple's XRP saw a 1% increase in value, despite a recent court ruling that raised concerns about its partial legal victory against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last month.

The CoinDesk Market Index, which gauges the performance of the crypto markets, recorded a 1.3% increase.

"Clearly, there are fears over a liquidation cascade happening within the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem, Richard Mico, the U.S. CEO of payment-and-compliance infrastructure provider BanxaI, wrote in an email to CoinDesk. "I don’t know how likely such a cascade is, but the market seems jittery as a result of these metastasizing issues. What’s ironic is that DeFi had held up so well during the blowups of 2022, and yet it’s an exploit more recently that might be the trigger for a DeFi blowup itself now."

Mico added that a judge's ruling against stablecoin issuer Terraform Labs' motion to dismiss a lawsuit against the SEC might "be adding to the relatively soft sentiment in the market," but he noted that investors were buying up bitcoin's recent "dips below $29,000...pretty quickly," a sign that buyers are accumulating in expectation of the SEC approving one of the recent spot BTC ETF applications.

The major U.S. equity indexes experienced a slight downturn, with the Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 both sliding 0.4% and 0.3%, respectively.

In a note to CoinDesk, Mark Connors, the head of research at Canadian digital asset manager 3iQ, wrote that the recent "shift in market sentiment was NOT limited to digital assets, as equities took a breather."

"Our bellwether cross asset correlation metric hit a 20Y high as bonds and equities sold off," Connors wrote. "Looking forward, we will monitor for any sharp reversal from this historically high correlation - as that has often signaled a risk reversal."