Tag: cryptocurrency

Coinbase Considering Appeal as Netherlands Hits Crypto Exchange With $3.5 Million Fine : All Details

Coinbase has been fined $3.5 million (roughly Rs. 30 crore) in the Netherlands. The Dutch central bank has served the crypto exchange with a legal notice for offering crypto services in Netherlands without completing the required procedures, including registration. In May 2020, the Netherlands mandated crypto-related companies to register as official money transmitters. The country is aiming to curb the misuse of cryptocurrencies for money laundering.

The fine levied on Coinbase by De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) is a notch higher than the base amount of $2 million (roughly Rs. 16 crore) that can be issued under the law. As per a Bitcoin.com report, the penalty amount has been decided based on the “severity and degree of culpability of the non-compliance”.

The Dutch central bank has claimed that Coinbase was operational in the country without a registration for nearly two years, between November 2020 and August 2022.

In this period, the bank claims, Coinbase was not able to report details on suspicious transactions to the authorities. Nefarious actors could have exploited this window to facilitate illicit cross border payments that could have gone undetected.

The crypto exchange can raise an appeal against the DNB decision till March.

The report further states that the exchange said it disagrees with the decision and is considering an appeal.

Coinbase obtained an operational registration in Netherlands last September.

In December, Coinbase said it recorded a 66 percent increase in requests that it received from law enforcement agencies throughout the year. These requests from Netherlands rose by 163 percent, Coinbase had said at the time.

Analytics firm Triple-A estimates that Netherlands housed over 520,000 crypto holders as of 2021.

Amid the growing number of crypto investors, the nation is taking a strict approach towards enforcing the Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorist Financing Act.

Coinbase rival Binance also faced a similar fine situation in Netherlands over the same reasons last year.

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Binance Moved $346 Million for Seized Bitzlato Crypto Exchange, Blockchain Data Shows

Crypto giant Binance processed almost $346 million (roughly (Rs. 2,900 crore) in Bitcoin for the Bitzlato digital currency exchange, whose founder was arrested by US authorities last week for allegedly running a “money laundering engine,” blockchain data seen by Reuters show.

The Justice Department on January 18 said it charged Bitzlato’s co-founder and majority shareholder Anatoly Legkodymov, a Russian national living in China, with operating an unlicensed money exchange business that “fueled a high-tech axis of cryptocrime” by processing $700 million roughly (Rs. 5,800 crore) in illicit funds. Bitzlato had touted the laxity of its background checks on clients, the Justice Department said, adding that when the exchange did ask users for ID information, “it repeatedly allowed them to provide information belonging to “straw man” registrants.”

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, was among Bitzlato’s top three counterparties by the amount of bitcoin received between May 2018 and September 2022, the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) said last week.

Binance was the only major crypto exchange among Bitzlato’s top counterparties, FinCEN said. It said the others to transact with Bitzlato were the Russian-language darknet drugs marketplace Hydra, a small exchange called LocalBitcoins and a crypto investment website called Finiko, which it described as “an alleged crypto Ponzi scheme based in Russia.” FinCEN did not detail the scale of the entities’ interactions with Bitzlato.

Hong Kong-registered Bitzlato was a “primary money laundering concern” related to Russian illicit finance, FinCEN added. It will ban the transmission of funds to Bitzlato by the US and other financial institutions from February 1. FinCEN said. It did not name Binance or other individual firms among those subject to the ban.

A Binance spokesperson said via email it had “provided substantial assistance” to international law enforcement to support their investigation of Bitzlato. The company is committed to “working collaboratively” with law enforcement, they added, declining to give details about its dealings with Bitzlato or the nature of its cooperation with such agencies.

Bitzlato, whose website says it has been seized by French authorities, could not be reached by Reuters. Legkodymov, has not made any public comment since his arrest in Miami last week and did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

Hydra’s operator, who was indicted in the United States, and a lawyer representing Finiko’s founder did not respond to requests to comment. Nor did Finland-based LocalBitcoins.

Reuters has no evidence that the Binance, LocalBitcoins or Finiko transactions with Bitzlato, which the Justice Department described as a “haven for criminal proceeds and funds intended for use in criminal activity,” broke any rules or laws.

However, one former US banking regulator and one former law enforcement official said Binance’s status as one of the top counterparties would focus Justice Department and US Treasury attention on Binance’s compliance checks with Bitzlato.

“I wouldn’t call it a warning shot over the bow, I would call it a guided missile,” said Ross Delston, an independent American lawyer and former banking regulator who is also an expert witness on anti-money laundering issues, referring to FinCEN’s citing of Binance and LocalBitcoins.

The Justice Department and FinCEN declined to comment.

Binance moved over 20,000 Bitcoin, worth $345.8 million roughly (Rs. 2,900 crore) at they time they were transacted, across some 205,000 transactions for Bitzlato between May 2018 and its closure last week, according to a review of previously unreported data. The figures were compiled by leading US blockchain researcher Chainalysis and seen by Reuters.

Bitcoin worth about $175 million roughly (Rs. 1,400 crore) was transferred to Binance from Bitzlato in that period, making Binance its largest receiving counterparty, the data show.

About $90 million roughly (Rs. 750 crore) of the total transfers took place after August 2021, when Binance said it would require users to submit identification to combat financial crime, according to the data from Chainalysis, which declined to comment. Such checks, Binance said in a blog last year, tackle “the funding and laundering of money from illicit activities.” Reuters could not determine whether Binance enforced its ID requirements with Bitzlato.

Darknet Market

Chainalysis, which is used by US authorities to track illicit crypto flows, had warned in February of last year that Bitzlato was high risk. In a report, Chainalysis said nearly half of Bitzlato’s transfers between 2019 and 2021 were “illicit and risky,” identifying almost $1 billion roughly (Rs. 8,200 crore) in such transactions.

The US action against Bitzlato comes as the Justice Department investigates Binance for possible money laundering and sanctions violations. Some federal prosecutors have concluded that the evidence collected justifies filing charges against executives including founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao, Reuters reported in December.

Reuters could not establish whether Binance’s dealings with Bitzlato are under review.

Binance, which does not reveal the location of its core exchange, has processed at least $10 billion (roughly Rs. 82,000 crore) in payments for criminals and companies seeking to evade US sanctions, Reuters found in a series of articles last year based on blockchain data, court and company records.

The reporting also showed that Binance intentionally kept weak anti-money laundering controls and plotted to evade regulators in the United States and elsewhere, according to former executives and company documents.

Binance disputed the articles, calling the illicit-fund calculations inaccurate and the descriptions of its compliance controls “outdated.” The exchange said last year it is “driving higher industry standards” and that it is seeking to improve its ability to detect illegal crypto activity.

Both Binance and Bitzlato were significant counterparties of the world’s largest darknet drugs marketplace Hydra. The Russian-language site was shut down by US and German authorities last year. The Justice Department said Bitzlato exchanged more than $700 million (roughly Rs. 5,700 crore) in crypto with Hydra, either directly or through intermediaries.

In an article published last June, Reuters reviewed blockchain data that showed that buyers and sellers on Hydra used Binance to make and receive crypto payments worth around $780 million (roughly Rs. 6,400 crore) between 2017 and 2022. A Binance spokesperson said at the time that the Hydra figure was “inaccurate and overblown.”

© Thomson Reuters 2023

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New FTX CEO Says Bankrupt Crypto Exchange Could Restart Business: Report

Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX is looking into the possibility of reviving its business, Chief Executive Officer John Ray told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

Ray, who took over the reins in November, has set up a task force to explore restarting FTX.com, the company’s main international exchange, he said in an interview with the WSJ.

The CEO also told the Journal that he would look into whether reviving FTX’s international exchange would recover more value for the company’s customers than his team could get from simply liquidating assets or selling the platform.

FTX’s native token FTT surged nearly 30 percent after the report.

“I’m glad Mr. Ray is finally paying lip service to turning the exchange back on after months of squashing such efforts!” FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said in a tweet.

“I’m still waiting for him to finally admit FTX US is solvent and give customers their money back,” Bankman-Fried added.

A legal representative for FTX did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Bankman-Fried has been accused of stealing billions of dollars from the exchange’s customers to pay debts incurred by his crypto-focused hedge fund, Alameda Research. He has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges.

The future of customer funds, however, remains unclear. Earlier this week, FTX said in a report to creditors that hackers stole about $415 million (roughly Rs. 3,369 crore) in crypto from its international and US exchanges since its bankruptcy in November.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

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Bankman-Fried blames Changpeng Zhao for campaign against FTX

Sam Bankman-Fried accused Binance boss Changpeng “CZ” Zhao of waging a lengthy campaign to destroy his crypto empire on Thursday while making yet another attempt to explain what led to FTX’s catastrophic bankruptcy.

In a lengthy Substack post, the disgraced former FTX CEO alleged that Zhao’s “fateful tweet” on Nov. 6 capped a “extremely effective months-long PR campaign against FTX.”

“In November 2022, an extreme, quick, targeted crash precipitated by the CEO of Binance made Alameda insolvent,” Bankman-Fried wrote.

The disgraced FTX founder’s business collapsed shortly after Zhao tweeted that Binance was dumping its position on FTX’s in-house digital token FTT.

The tweet started a domino effect that pushed Bankman-Fried’s crypto hedge fund Alameda Research into insolvency and FTX filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11.

The Post has reached out to Binance for further comment.

The blog post marked some of Bankman-Fried’s first public comments since he pleaded not guilty to eight federal charges of fraud in connection to FTX’s collapse on Jan. 3. The feds have accused the 30-year-old of perpetuating a scheme to bilk FTX customers out of billions of dollars that were used to fund his ritzy lifestyle and prop up risky bets at Almeda.

Bankman-Fried and Zhao have regularly exchanged insults since FTX’s downfall. In December, Zhao responded directly to claims that his actions caused the bankruptcy, tweeting that “FTX killed themselves (and their users) because they stole billions of dollars in user funds.”

Changpeng Zhao has denied his actions caused FTX’s downfall.
REUTERS

“No healthy business can be destroyed by a tweet,” Zhao added.

Bankman-Fried cycled through many of his other oft-repeated defenses in the post and maintained his innocence on the fraud charges. The former FTX boss, who has claimed to be down to his last $100,000, also denied having a secret stash of money.

“I didn’t steal funds, and I certainly didn’t stash billions away,” Bankman-Fried said. “Nearly all of my assets were and still are utilizable to backstop FTX customers.”

Sam Bankman-Fried faces 115 years in prison.
GC Images

Bankman-Fried has been in a separate legal battle in bankruptcy court with the feds and multiple creditors over a $460 million stake in Robinhood. Bankman-Fried’s lawyers have argued he should retain control of the stake to fund his legal defense.

“[I have] offered to contribute nearly all of my personal shares in Robinhood to customers — or 100%, if the Chapter 11 team would honor my D&O legal expense indemnification,” he wrote.

Bankman-Fried’s post included several charts detailing his “estimates” of the financial situations at FTX and Alameda. He claimed that Alameda had a net asset value of $100 billion as recently as 2021.

Zhao is CEO of Binance.
REUTERS

“All of which is to say: no funds were stolen,” Bankman-Fried wrote. “Alameda lost money due to a market crash it was not adequately hedged for.”

Bankman-Fried is currently under house arrest at his parents’ mansion in California. He faces up to 115 years in prison if convicted on all charges.

SBF penned a lengthy blog post on FTX’s demise.
REUTERS

Several former FTX and Alameda executives, including Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, are cooperating with authorities on their case against Bankman-Fried.



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Binance’s Deal to Acquire Bankrupt Voyager Digital Faces US SEC Objection: All Details

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a limited objection to Binance.US’s proposed $1 billion (roughly Rs. 8,250 crore) acquisition of bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Voyager Digital, a bankruptcy court filing showed on Wednesday. The regulator pointed out the failure to include necessary information in Binance.US’s disclosure statement.

It said the purchase agreement lacks details on the crypto exchange’s ability to close the deal and has asked for more information on the nature of the company’s business operations following the deal, according to the filing.

Attorneys for Voyager and Binance.US did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Last month, the US Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) said its review could delay or block the deal.

Binance has been the subject of a money laundering probe by US prosecutors. Binance.US, based in California’s Palo Alto, has said that its separate American exchange is “fully independent” of the main Binance platform.

Towards the last leg of December, Binance recorded a large number of withdrawals following the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange, which succumbed to a liquidity crunch. At the time, CEO Changpeng Zhao had called this ‘normal market behaviour’ while attempting to pacify crypto investors.

Between 2021 and 2022, the overall crypto sector lost over $2 trillion (roughly Rs. 1,65,74,700 crore). The Russia-Ukraine war, the recession that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, repeated hack attacks, and the collapse of promising crypto projects like LUNA and FTX slashed investor engagement in the sector.

Under market stress, companies like CryptoCom and Binance among a number of others resorted to trimming their respective workforces, firms like BlockFi, Celsius, and Voyager Digital filed for bankruptcy.

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Sam Bankman-Fried is fighting to keep $450m stake in Robinhood

Sam Bankman-Fried is battling to keep a $450 million stake in retail stock Robinhood that FTX’s new boss is trying to claw back from the indicted crypto huckster, according to court records.

The ousted FTX founder claims he is entitled to the assets listed under Emergent Fidelity Technologies, a holding company Bankman-Fried registered in Antigua.

The filings released Thursday in a Delaware bankruptcy court show Bankman-Fried is the sole director and majority stakeholder of Emergent.

However, new FTX CEO John J. Ray III — who is seeking to regain billions in investor funds that Bankman-Fried allegedly swindled from them to prop up his hedge fund Alameda Research — argued the stake in Robinhood belongs to FTX.

The matter is complicated further by the fact that two other investors — the crypto lending firm BlockFi and FTX creditor Yonatan Ben Shimon — are also claiming ownership of the Robinhood stake.

John J. Ray III was installed as CEO of FTX after the company was placed in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
AP

In May, Emergent and Bankman-Fried revealed that it owned a 7.6% stake in Robinhood. According to SEC filings, Bankman-Fried paid $648 million for more than 56.3 million shares in the app.

On Friday, shares of Robinhood were trading at $8, putting the stake’s worth at $447 million — a $200 million loss.

FTX, which has been placed under the stewardship of Ray while being administered under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, seeks to freeze any activity in the shares while the legal process plays out.

Bankman-Fried’s Antigua-based holding company bought a 7.6% stake in Robinhood earlier this year.
Robin App

“The debtors are conducting an investigation into the business affairs of the FTX group,” FTX said in the filing.

“This investigation to date indicates that the Robinhood shares are property of the debtors’ estates, held only nominally by Emergent.”

Last month, BlockFi filed suit against Bankman-Fried, claiming that Alameda Research promised to secure $1 billion in loans that included the Robinhood stake.

BlockFi alleged that Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s on-again, off-again girlfriend who ran Alameda Research, made the pledge.

But FTX, which is contesting BlockFi’s claim, said Ellison had no standing to make such a promise.

Yonatan Ben Shimon, a fintech executive and FTX creditor, claims he is the rightful owner of the Robinhood stake.
virtualhumans.org

“The Robinhood Shares were included in these pledged assets by Alameda’s then-CEO, despite the fact that the Robinhood Shares were nominally held by Emergent, because Alameda had then, and continues to have, a property interest in the Robinhood Shares,” FTX said in its court filing.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev told CNBC earlier this month that he expects the stake in his company to be tied up in bankruptcy proceedings for the foreseeable future.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said that ownership of the stake in his company will be determined in bankruptcy proceedings.
AP

“I’m not surprised that it’s one of the more valuable assets they have on their balance sheet, because it is public company’s stock,” Tenev told CNBC.

 “We’re just watching this unfold. And it’s going to be locked up in bankruptcy proceedings — most likely for some time — and so we’re just kind of seeing how that plays out.”

Bankman-Fried was freed on $250 million bond on Thursday. He awaits trial on federal charges including wire fraud and securities fraud.

Ellison and FTX co-founder Gary Wang have pledged guilty to federal charges of fraud. They have indicated they will cooperate with investigators. The have both been released on $250,000 bail.

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FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Allowed $250 Million Bond, House Arrest

The cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried can post $250 million (nearly Rs. 2, 070 crore) bond and live in his parents’ home in California while he awaits trial on charges that he swindled investors and looted customer deposits on his FTX trading platform, a judge said Thursday.

Assistant US Attorney Nicolas Roos said in the US District Court in Manhattan that Bankman-Fried, 30, “perpetrated a fraud of epic proportions.” Roos proposed strict bail terms, including a $250 million bond and house arrest at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California.

An important reason for allowing bail was that Bankman-Fried agreed to waive extradition, Roos said.

Magistrate Judge Gabriel W Gorenstein agreed to the bond and also approved the house arrest proposal. He also said Bankman-Fried would be required to get an electronic monitoring bracelet before leaving the Manhattan courthouse.

Bankman-Fried wore a suit and tie in court and sat between his attorneys. Two US marshals sat behind him.

Bankman-Fried, arrested in the Bahamas last week, was flown to New York late Wednesday after deciding not to challenge his extradition.

While he was in the air, the US attorney in Manhattan announced that two of Bankman-Fried’s closest business associates had also been charged and had secretly pleaded guilty.

Carolyn Ellison, 28, the former chief executive of Bankman-Fried’s trading firm, Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, 29, who co-founded FTX, pleaded guilty to charges including wire fraud, securities fraud and commodities fraud.

US Attorney Damian Williams said in a video statement that both were cooperating with investigators and had agreed to assist in any prosecution. He warned others who enabled the alleged fraud to come forward.

“If you participated in misconduct at FTX or Alameda, now is the time to get ahead of it,” he said. “We are moving quickly, and our patience is not eternal.”

Prosecutors and regulators contend that Bankman-Fried was at the center of several illegal schemes to use customer and investor money for personal gain. He faces the possibility of decades in prison if convicted on all counts.

In a series of interviews before his arrest, Bankman-Fried said he never intended to defraud anyone.

Bankman-Fried is charged with using money, illicitly taken from FTX customers, to enable trades at Alameda, spend lavishly on real estate, and make millions of dollars in campaign contributions to U.S. politicians.

FTX, founded in 2019, rode the crypto investing phenomenon to great heights quickly, becoming one of the world’s largest exchanges for digital currency. Seeking customers beyond the tech world, it hired the comic actor and writer Larry David to appear in a TV ad that ran during the Super Bowl, hyping crypto as the next big thing.

Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire, however, abruptly collapsed in early November when customers pulled deposits en masse amid reports questioning some of its financial arrangements.

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Sam Bankman-Fried Said to Reverse Decision to Contest Extradition to the US

Former FTX Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried is expected to appear in court in the Bahamas on Monday to reverse his decision to contest extradition to the United States, where he faces fraud charges, a person familiar with the matter said on Saturday.

The 30-year-old cryptocurrency mogul was indicted in federal court in Manhattan on Tuesday and accused of engaging in a scheme to defraud FTX customers by using billions of dollars in stolen deposits to pay for expenses and debts and to make investments for his crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research LLC.

His decision to consent to extradition would pave the way for him to appear in U.S. court to face wire fraud, money laundering and campaign finance charges.

Upon arrival in the United States, Bankman-Fried would likely be held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, though some federal defendants are being held at jails just outside New York City due to overcrowding at the facility, said defense lawyer Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma.

At his initial court hearing in Manhattan, Bankman-Fried would be asked to enter a plea and a judge would make a determination on bail, Margulis-Ohnuma said. The attorney added that such a hearing must take place within 48 hours of Bankman-Fried’s arrival in the United States, though it would likely be sooner.

Prosecutors will likely argue that Bankman-Fried is a flight risk and should remain in custody because of the large sums of money involved in the case and the unclear location of those funds.

“The missing money gives prosecutors strong arguments that he is a flight risk,” said former federal prosecutor and white-collar defense attorney Michael Weinstein. “I expect that if a judge grants pretrial release, they would impose very restrictive and onerous conditions.”

Any trial is likely more than a year away, legal experts told Reuters.

A spokesman for Bankman-Fried declined to comment. Bankman-Fried has acknowledged risk management failings at FTX but has said he does not believe he has criminal liability.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan declined to comment.

‘Biggest financial frauds in American history’

It was not immediately clear what prompted Bankman-Fried to change his mind and decide not to contest extradition.

He was remanded on Tuesday to the Bahamas’ Fox Hill prison after Chief Magistrate JoyAnn Ferguson-Pratt rejected his request to remain at home while awaiting a hearing on his extradition.

The U.S. State Department in a 2021 report said conditions at Fox Hill were “harsh,” citing overcrowding, rodent infestation and prisoners relying on buckets as toilets. Authorities there say conditions have since improved.

Bankman-Fried amassed a fortune valued at over $20 billion as he rode a cryptocurrency boom to build FTX into one of the world’s largest exchanges. His arrest last Monday in the Bahamas, where he lives and where FTX is based, came just a month after the exchange collapsed amid a flurry of customer withdrawals.

Damian Williams, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, described the collapse of FTX as one of the “biggest financial frauds in American history.” He has described the office’s investigation as ongoing, and urged people with knowledge of wrongdoing at FTX or Alameda to cooperate.

One top executive at FTX, Ryan Salame, told securities regulators in the Bahamas on November 9 that assets belonging to the exchange’s customers were transferred to Alameda to cover the hedge fund’s losses, according to a document made public as part of FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings in Delaware.

FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11, the same day Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO.

A lawyer for Salame did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Binance Proof-of-Reserves Auditor Mazars Pauses Work Temporarily for Crypto Clients: Report

Mazars, the auditing firm working with major cryptocurrency exchange Binance, has paused all work for clients in the crypto industry, news outlet Coindesk reported on Friday, citing an emailed statement from Binance.

“Mazars has indicated that they will temporarily pause their work with all of their crypto clients globally, which include Crypto.com, KuCoin, and Binance. Unfortunately, this means that we will not be able to work with Mazars for the moment,” a Binance spokesperson said to Coindesk.

Mazars had performed a so-called proof-of-reserves check on Binance’s bitcoin holdings earlier this month, finding its bitcoin reserves on a single day in late November were overcollateralised.

The audit firm has deleted the webpage containing a report on the check, published on December 7.

Mazars and Binance did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The pause by Mazars comes amid intense scrutiny, sparked by the bankruptcy of the FTX exchange, of how such platforms hold user funds.

Binance was this week hit by a surge in outflows, which Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao called “business as usual.” Binance also paused withdrawals of a major stablecoin for a period on Monday, blaming delays in the traditional banking system.

It was earlier reported that Binance has witnessed a surge in trading activities for Sun Token, Ardor, Osmosis, FUNToken, and Golem. With the offbeat trade movement of SUN, ARDR, OSMO, FUN, and GLM, users wondered if some accounts on Binance were compromised with stolen keys.

However, the official Twitter handle of Binance revealed that the company conducted an internal probe to check if bad actors were targeting the exchange.

 

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Bitcoin, Ether Record Dips on Black Friday Despite Positive Mid-Week Spell

Bitcoin’s price has fared better over the past few days but hasn’t quite managed to break past the psychologically important $17,000 (roughly Rs. 13.8 lakh) level, even though the wider market appears to have turned a corner after the collapse of FTX. As things stand, Bitcoin is down by close to 1.8 percent in the last 24 hours with its price now around the $16,450 (roughly Rs. 13.35 lakh) mark across global exchanges while Indian exchanges like CoinDCX value BTC at $17,798 (roughly Rs. 14.4 lakh), which is 0.13 percent higher than what the crypto asset was valued at on early Thursday.

On global exchanges like CoinMarketCap, Coinbase, and Binance the price of Bitcoin stands at $16,478 (roughly Rs. 13.37 lakh) while CoinGecko data shows that BTC’s value now sits 1.9 percent lower than where it stood last Friday.

Ether, the largest smart contracts token, halted as it approaches a critical hurdle. The drop in momentum can be attributed to Bitcoin’s slump in buying pressure. Ether is currently down by roughly 2.35 percent over the past 24 hours across global exchanges. Meanwhile, on Indian exchanges, ETH is valued at $1,274 (roughly Rs. 1.03 lakh) where values are down by 0.49 percent in the past day.

Gadgets 360’s cryptocurrency price tracker reveals that most major altcoins saw a dip in value too with the global crypto market capitalisation numbers showing a 1.36 percent plunge over the last day.

Polygon, BNB, Cosmos, Cardano, Uniswap, Solana, Polkadot, and Avalanche all recorded losses, while TRON, Chainlink, and Monero marked minor gains over the past 24 hours.

Dogecoin and Shiba Inu recorded minor dips too. Dogecoin is currently valued at $0.08 (roughly Rs. 6.62) after losing more than 1.8 percent in value over the last 24 hours, while, Shiba Inu is valued at $0.0000089 (roughly Rs. 0.000726), down by 1.6 percent over the past day.

“Broader crypto markets have traded in a narrow range, after the massive sell-offs in the previous two weeks, settling between a market capitalisation above $850 billion (roughly Rs. 69,00,408 crore) but remained below $900 billion (roughly Rs. 73,06,315 crore). BTC formed a local bottom around $15,600 (roughly Rs. 12.6 lakh) and now continues to struggle around $16,500 (roughly Rs. 13.4 lakh), while ETH is trading around $1,200 (roughly Rs. 97,417). SOL continued to trade below $15 (roughly Rs. 1,218), with an overall market capitalisation of just above $5 billion (roughly Rs. 40,590 crore). Fan token Chiliz (CHZ) lost a lot of ground after rallying before the Football World Cup, down over 20 percent last week. Curve DAO (CRV) too remained highly volatile, but ended up jumping by ~20 percent with announcement of their stablecoin plans,” explains CoinSwitch’s Crypto Ecosystem Lead, Parth Chaturvedi, analysing the market this week.

“Last week was dominated by the details emerging from the FTX bankruptcy filing, which revealed that the underlying jumble is a lot murkier and the industry continued to guess the potential spread of contagion. Most notably, the Top 50 creditors were owed over $3 billion (roughly Rs. 24,354 crore), but their names were kept confidential which created more speculation in the markets. However, the market found a local bottom when Barry Silbert clarified that there’s no bankruptcy threat to DCG group companies, including Genesis. The overhang on the potential unwinding of Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust still kept investors on the edge,” Chaturvedi adds.

“The silver lining continued to be the improving global macro backdrop, particularly in the US, where expectations of Fed slowing down on its hiking cycle gathered steam and resulted in a relief rally across ‘risk-on’ assets that were sustained over the week. Closer home, CRE8, an Indian Rupee denominated Virtual Digital Asset (crypto) index was down 1.44 percent in the past 7 days. The Index value stood at Rs. 2,377 at 8 am IST, on November 25. BTC and ETH continue to be the top assets by market capitalisation,” he explains.

Cryptocurrency is an unregulated digital currency, not a legal tender and subject to market risks. The information provided in the article is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, trading advice or any other advice or recommendation of any sort offered or endorsed by NDTV. NDTV shall not be responsible for any loss arising from any investment based on any perceived recommendation, forecast or any other information contained in the article. 

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