Bitcoin was slogging just above $29,200 on Tuesday, nearly flat over the previous day but still trapped in the same constrained range it’s been occupying for a week. This was soon before Asia’s TradFi markets began.
A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit against internet marketer Richard Schueler, also known online as Richard Heart, and his projects Hex, PulseChain, and PulseX, as well as the fallout from an exploit of stablecoin exchange Curve, dealt the latest industry body blow to markets, causing the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization to fall from a brief early Monday morning high above $29,500.
Recently, Bitcoin has outperformed Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value, as well as other significant altcoins. ETH was trading at $1,853, a 0.5% decrease from Sunday at the same hour. The tokens of the smart contract platforms Solana, Tron, and Polygon, SOL, TRX, and MATIC, have lately decreased by 1.8%, 2.3%, and 2.2%, respectively.
The price of CRV, the native cryptocurrency of Curve, fell 12.5% to 56 cents. Earlier this year, CRV traded for more than $1. A gauge of the success of the cryptocurrency markets, the CoinDesk Market Index, has increased little.
The CEO and co-founder of algorithmic trading platform CoinRoutes, Dave Weisberger, noted altcoins’ downward trend after the HEX suit in an email to CoinDesk, but he added that it involved a “misappropriation of funds” and did not point to any structural issues with the broader market.
Weisberger also said, “In general, we’re in the dog days of summer and in turn seeing relatively low volumes for Bitcoin along with Ethereum,” but added that “larger-size buyers” seemed to be stockpiling bitcoin as the price lately declined.
Although “the market seems to be in a holding pattern,” he added, “Sentiment has improved.”
