Gensler Criticized and Ripple Good News?

Crypto news: We bring you a round-up of what went down in crypto this week. And the knives are out for Gary Gensler, the chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Last year it was Do Kwon and Sam Bankman-Fried who vied for title of crypto public enemy number one. Now, the crypto sector has set its sights on Gary Gensler. 

Gensler Becomes Public Enemy # 1

One of his biggest critics is David Sacks, the tech entrepreneur of Paypal Mafia fame. Sacks reckons Gensler is “far exceeding his authority” in effectively curtailing the ability of U.S. citizens to trade cryptocurrencies.  

“It is not up to the chairman of the SEC to say that Americans should not be holding crypto,” he said.

In the space of a week, major exchanges like Robinhood have delisted tokens classified as securities by the SEC. While the U.S. arm of Binance has been forced to suspend USD withdrawals and deposits entirely.

And to set the cat among the pigeons, one lawmaker in Hong Kong openly invited Coinbase to relocate.

Johnny Ng made a blatant play for Coinbase’s business by saying: “I hereby offer an invitation to welcome all global virtual asset trading operators including @coinbase to come to HK for application of official trading platforms and further development plans.” 

Crypto Socially Speaking

Binance Banished

It’s been a grim week for the world’s biggest crypto exchange, Binance. The week started with it announcing it was withdrawing 14 spot trading pairs.

The exchange pulled the plug after recording a reported $8 billion in outflows after the SEC sued it last week.

CEO Changpeng Zhao attempted to put a brave face on the news tweeting that some third parties presented outflows out of context. 

He added that third parties inaccurately categorize sharp price drops caused by arbitrage traders as outflows. They also don’t consider inflows.

The end of the week saw the exchange shuttering operations in the Netherlands, citing challenges in registering as a virtual asset service provider (VASP).

At the End of Our Tether

Thursday was a wobbly day for Tether (USDT) as the stablecoin briefly slipped under its $1 peg.

Tether’s CTO Paolo Ardoino attempted to calm an excitable market with a statement of the obvious, saying that “markets are edgy in these days.”  

He added that the firm is ready to redeem for anyone interested, referring to holders’ ability to swap USDT for the underlying dollar it represents. “Let them come,” he said.

The panic started as the USDT balance on Curve’s 3pool started rising to 72%. 3pool consists of stablecoins USDT, USDC, and DAI.

An increasing USDT balance may indicate that traders might be looking to exchange their USDT for other stablecoins.

Hinman Documents Released

The Hinman documents finally saw the light of day on Wednesday, confirming what many suspected. TL:DR, Bill Hinman was a director of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2008, he made a speech in which he expressed his view that Ethereum is not a security.

And why is this significant? Well, the documents give support to Ripple, Coinbase and other companies targeted by regulators by raising questions about how regulators interpret laws.

“My biggest takeaway from these Hinman emails is that it seems SEC officials who weighed in on the speech believed the goal was to provide market guidance and tried to write it in a way that would convey that,” said Eleanor Terrett, a reporter for Fox Business.

“Thus, in the Ripple case, the SEC lawyers’ argument that the speech was solely Hinman’s opinion and not intended for market guidance could now be undermined.”

The release was music to the ears of the XRP army, with prices surging by over 7% in 24 hours. Traders seemingly placed their bets on a favorable outcome for Ripple Labs in the ongoing lawsuit. 

Crypto Coin News

Among the biggest crypto losers this week were FLOW, down by around 45%. Our analyst, Konstantin Kaiser, says the potential for a further decline toward zero is nearly unlimited.

Solana (SOL) was the second biggest loser, experiencing a drop of approximately 42% in its price last week. As a result, it retraced back to the golden ratio support level at approximately $15.