Cryptocurrency prices are ending an up week on a high note in New York as the market benefits from an incursion by traditional finance players while the U.S. government clamps down on leading pioneers of the digital-asset industry.
The value of all crypto tokens was about $1.25 trillion in the late afternoon, according to CoinGecko, up almost 12% for the week and 51% for the year. Market leader BitcoinBTC (BTC) was quoted at $30,889, rising 2.5% over the previous 24 hours and 20% for the week, while No. 2 crypto ether (ETHETH) edged up 0.8% to $1,901, bringing its seven-day gain to 14%.
Two forces seemed to be driving prices. First was the previous week’s announcement that BlackRockBLK, the world’s largest asset manager, was seeking approval to list an exchange-traded fund (ETF) for spot-market bitcoin. The Securities and Exchange Commission had repeatedly refused to accept such funds, even though it allows futures-based ETFs, claiming the latter are less susceptible to market manipulation. BlackRock took steps to make its offering seem palatable to the SEC, but when a company that powerful puts in the effort to prepare a listing in a new category after multiple competitors were turned down, the idea’s time has probably come.
Evidence can be seen in the slew of smaller ETF sponsors that quickly followed in BlackRock’s wake by proposing their own spot bitcoin funds, including InvescoIVZ, WisdomTree and Valkyrie Investments. Spot-market ETFs could broaden demand for bitcoin by offering the convenience of stock trading to the kind of investors who are hesitant to get involved with crypto wallets, seed phrases and the risk of hackers. Collective investment funds run by professional managers may be antithetical to the individualistic philosophy of many early digital-asset buyers—the kind who subscribe to the “not your keys, not your crypto” slogan—but that did not halt the week’s gains.
The other development supporting the market was the announcement that EDX, a cryptocurrency exchange for institutions, was opening for business. Backed by traditional-finance heavyweights including Charles Schwab, Citadel, Fidelity and Sequoia Capital, the exchange offers trading in four cryptos: bitcoin, ether, litecoin and bitcoin cash. It differs from entrenched competitors in operating on a noncustodial model that bars it from taking possession of the assets it lists.
“It seems that despite a fractious SEC, many of the largest players in the U.S. financial services Pantheon are still very bullish crypto—planning new spot ETFs and making investments in ecosystem infrastructure,” Bradley Duke, co-CEO at ETCETC Group, which provides exchange-traded crypto products in Europe, told Forbes by email. “This has had the effect of boosting investor sentiment.”
The improved outlook comes after the early-June crackdowns on Binance and Coinbase, the two largest cryptocurrency exchanges. The SEC issued civil complaints against both for acting as unlicensed exchanges and listing cryptocurrencies that it considers unregistered securities, additionally charging Binance with engaging in “a multi-step plan to surreptitiously evade U.S. laws.”
The issue of which cryptos are securities and which are commodities and whether a single currency can be each at different times is not settled, although bitcoin seems to be beyond the SEC’s reach.
Crypto prices fell in the days following the suits, with the market’s value reaching a nadir around $1.06 trillion on June 13. The BlackRock news on June 15 kindled a rebound that gained power this week.
One big gainer in the current surge is bitcoin cash, which rose 31% on Friday and 66% for the week. Its inclusion as one of the inaugural EDX listing was the catalyst for that rise, according to Greg Moritz, cofounder of crypto hedge fund AltTab Capital, told Forbes by email.
“With the recent launch of the institutional exchange EDX, Bitcoin Cash has been in the spotlight,” he writes. “Being listed alongside BTC and ETH suggests that institutional players think BCHBCH is likely to be considered a commodity rather than a security. Accordingly there has been a spike in open interest as traders anticipate a significant flow of institutional capital into BCH, a project which until now has had rather bleak long-term prospects.”
Bitcoin cash is a built on the same blockchain as bitcoin, but it can process transactions much more quickly. That makes it faster and cheaper to use, but at the potential expense of security.
LitecoinLTC, the fourth EDX-listed currency—which, like bitcoin cash, is an offshoot of bitcoin—was up 5.4% on Friday and 19% for the week.
On Wall Street, crypto mining stocks posted notable gains. Marathon Digital was up 7.4% for the day and 27% for the week, Hive Blockchain gained 7% (29%) and Hut 8 Mining 5% (27%).
Coinbase notched a daily gain of 6.9% and is up 11% for the week. The exchange is also 4.7% above its level before the SEC suit was announced on June 6.
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