As October entered its second week, some set backs have occurred surrounding the future of cryptocurrency entering the public trade markets. Perhaps the biggest news of the week is that Visa (NYSE: V) quit its participation in Facebook's (NASDAQ: FB) Libra Association on Friday. Visa announced its withdrawal from Facebook's stablecoin project on the same day that Libra partners eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY), Mastercard (NYSE: MA), Mercado Pago (NASDAQ: MELI), and Stripe all confirmed they left the Libra Association. eBay and Stripe cited political pressure as the reason, while Visa and Mastercard vowed to work on their own efforts to enable financial inclusion. The Libra Association's first official meeting is slated for next week. But with the departure of key partners and growing scrutiny from global lawmakers and regulators, it is unclear if Facebook will be able to develop Libra.
Here is the rest of the week in review:
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday rejected the Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) proposal filed by Bitwise Asset Management in conjunction with NYSE Arca. The SEC explained that the proposal did not meet legal requirements to prevent market manipulation or other illegal or fraudulent activities. Bitwise first filed the ETF proposal with NYSE Arca in January 2019, launching its most recent push to offer retail investors a regulated Bitcoin product tradable on U.S. stock exchanges. So far the SEC has rejected all Bitcoin ETF proposals, citing market manipulation and fraud concerns. Now the SEC only has one more Bitcoin ETF application to rule on, a proposal filed by Wilshire Phoenix and NYSE Arca.
The SEC also secured an emergency restraining order against the Telegram Group and its subsidiary TON Issuer for their $1.7 billion token sale. The SEC announced on Friday that it filed for and received an emergency action and restraining order halting Telegram from selling or otherwise distributing its tokens called grams in the United States. Telegram already sold 2.9 billion gram tokens at discounted prices to 171 presale buyers worldwide, including more than 1 billion gram tokens sold to US investors. SEC Division of Enforcement co-director Stephanie Avakian explained the emergency action intends to prevent Telegram from flooding U.S. markets with digital tokens that violate federal securities laws. She added that Telegram failed to provide its investors with information about the gram token and Telegram's operations. Telegram planned to take the TON network live on October 31.
Cryptocurrency prices increased slightly to $228 billion this week. For the majors, all except Tether (USDT) rose, with Binance Coin (BNB), Ripple (XRP), and Bitcoin SV (BSV) posting large gains. In the top 100, the biggest losers were EDUCare (EKT), down 10%, Pundi X (NPXS), down 6%, and Factom (FCT), down 6%. The biggest gainers were Jewel (JWL), up a whopping 167%, Centrality (CENNZ), up 40%, and Siacoin (SIA), up 39%. Next week traders will watch if crypto can post another green week.
The author owns a small amount of BTC.