Bitcoin stumbles amid regulatory pressure and bankruptcies

Bitcoin (BTC) had a bullish January and it seems to be on the good way. However, it fell under $23,000 in February, along with the entire crypto market. This could be due to some bad news. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is increasing its regulatory oversight on crypto, and several Bitcoin companies have filed for bankruptcies in the meantime.

In the last seven days, Bitcoin has lost over 5%, while the whole crypto market capitalization decreased by 4% [CMC]. Among the most affected cryptocurrencies, we have Aptos (-25%), Optimism (-20%), Avalanche (-16%), Decentraland (-15%), مونيرو (-12%), and دوجكوين (-11%).

Despite the bearish hit, some other coins have surged forward in the same period. The biggest winners were the AI services crypto platform SingularityNET (+113%), the indexing protocol The Graph (+50%), and the layer-two NFT solution ImmutableX (+10%). Polygon (MATIC), Basic Attention Token (BAT), and Lido DAO (LDO) also experienced positive prices.

At the same time, the number of Bitcoin addresses with non-zero balance just hit a new All-Time High (ATH), according to Glassnode. This could imply that retail investors are buying more and/or waiting for the next bull run. Subsequently, the Bitcoin price could increase in the wake of it. Besides, new data shows that over one million BTC have left centralized crypto exchanges since 2020. That’s another bullish signal in progress.

Bitcoin, SEC, and bankruptcies

The US SEC is now investigating Kraken, one of the largest crypto exchanges globally. According to Bloomberg, the SEC may be considering charging Kraken for securities laws violations. Additionally, the evaluation is at an “advanced stage” and “could lead to a settlement in coming days.”

It wouldn’t be the first time that the exchange has had to pay fines to US authorities. Last November, they agreed to pay the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) over $362,000 for supposed violations of sanctions against Iran. It’s neither the first time that SEC sanctions a cryptocurrency company. Indeed, they charged Genesis and Gemini for offering unregistered securities barely last month.

Meanwhile, the Bitcoin ATM operator Cash Cloud filed for bankruptcy in Nevada (US). Its larger creditor is Genesis Global Capital, another crypto firm that filed for bankruptcy this year. From the other side of the globe, the old P2P exchange LocalBitcoins أعلن its definitive closure on February 9. They blame the long crypto winter for it and urge their users to withdraw their funds as soon as possible.

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