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12pm: Binance denied German custody licence
Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) has denied a custody licence to the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, Finance Forward has reported.
It’s the latest blow to Binance’s global operations, as it searches for a jurisdictional foothold following bruising crackdowns in the US and UK.
Though this will not cause Binance to exit the German market, the company’s growth plans will be substantially limited.
Binane’s native BNB token is one of the poorest performers today, dipping over 7% overnight.
Bitcoin is up 2.3% at US$30,720.
9am: Bitcoin gets bullish boost
Bitcoin took a brief dip below US$30,000 on Wednesday afternoon, but bullish support managed to swoop in and lift the BTC/USDT pair back above this critical support line.
At the time of writing, BTC/USDT was changing hands at US$30,340, having added half a percent in this morning’s trades after closing 2% lower yesterday.
Clearly, the bull run bitcoin has been in for the past week and a half is cooling off, with the week-on-week performance remaining in the green, albeit at only half a percent.
Will bitcoin stick above 30k? – Source: currency.com
Bitcoin had initially rallied after BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, applied for a spot bitcoin ETF with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Though the SEC, under crypto sceptic Gary Gensler, has flat-out denied such applications in the past, there is hope that BlackRock’s influence and financial might could sway the regulator’s opinions.
A spot bitcoin ETF approval would open bitcoin to swathes of institutional money that have been reticent to enter into a largely unregulated market.
These tailwinds have since cooled off, with long-term bitcoin bulls hoping to maintain the hard-fought 30k barrier.
Open interest on bitcoin futures remains exceptionally high at US$10.4bn, while options open interest on the call side is 66% against 34% on the puts side.
Moving over to Ethereum (ETH), the world’s second-largest cryptoasset has failed to meet bitcoin’s recent bullishness, dipping another 3.3% to US$1,828 yesterday, bringing ETH/USDT’s week-on-week performance comfortably into negative territory.
Even though ETH can’t match bitcoin’s price action right now, it is still managing to outclass the wider altcoin space.
ETH alternatives including Ripple (XRP), Cardano (ADA) and Polygon (MATIC) saw upper-single-digit losses over the past seven days, with Solana (SOL) not far behind.
This altcoin off-season has brought bitcoin dominance (a measure of bitcoin’s market capitalisation compared to the entire global crypto market cap) to fresh 26-month highs of 52%.
In the decentralised finance (DeFi) space, derivatives exchange Synthetix (SNX) and lending protocol Compound (COMP) pulled ahead overnight, adding 5.3% and 3.3% respectively.
Total value locked across all DeFi protocols currently stands at US$44bn.
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