Crypto has seen a huge upshot in price value over the past few months. There is some slight downward movement, but the market remains bullish. (Photo by Kylie Anderson on Unsplash)
We apologise this report didn’t come in March. This is in fact our third crypto update edition this year, and wow what a month it has been with BTC fluctuating but remaining stable enough for investors to remain confident.
The biggest story to come out of the crypto world this month was the sentencing of Sam Bankman-Fried. The fallen FTX founder was sentenced to 25 years in prison on March 29th and fined $11b USD. SBF was facing up to 110 years in prison (the maximum sentence) and prosecutors pushed for 40+ year sentence but had to settle for the judges’ judgement of 300 months.
The judge seemingly sent a message to fraudulent crypto companies and their employees, that if you break the law, the penalty will be severe. Public opinion seems to be mixed on the sentencing as some feel the sentence was too harsh and many feel it wasn’t long enough. Regardless, the law has spoken, and it will serve as a warning that fraudsters will be harshly punished for extorting their customers.
So, how did one of the biggest financial frauds in U.S. history come to light? Back in November 2022, CoinDesk reported that Alameda Research got most of its capital from speculative crypto tokens. This caused a flood of withdrawals from investors that questioned the financial stability of Alameda and caused FTX & Alameda into bankruptcy. In December of 2022, the U.S. government filed criminal and civil charges against SBF and other top executives at FTX. The charges stated that the company was falsely inflating their company’s financial holdings from niche tokens, the FTT token and other tokens supervised/created by FTX. The company was not backed up by fiat currency or other cryptocurrencies as previously thought. This revelation opened a pandora’s box that revealed FTX was overly leveraged and that universal accounting practices were not a priority.
The massive outflow of capital from investors caused the collapse of FTX. Binance liquidated their holdings of FTX, approximately $529m USD (23m FTT tokens) following “risk management” protocols after the bankruptcy and collapse of Terra (LUNA) at the beginning of 2022. This caused the FTT token to lose 80% of its value in just two days. Binance did try to forge a deal to buy FTX but then reneged on the takeover after corporate due diligence exposed mishandling of investors’ money.
The process to recover assets from FTX is a slow-moving train. The bankruptcy estate procedure is subject to many different avenues in an attempt to recoup funds and investors may have to settle for significantly less than their original investment. Officials are tracing where cryptocurrencies were transferred and asking numerous agencies/corporations/politicians to return FTX contributions.
The collapse of FTX and the 25-year sentence of SBF has rocked the crypto industry and has served as a template for investigators and the courts for future financial crypto crimes. Until the industry is fully regulated, it is a definite possibility that this could happen again in the future.
This report will look at the major coins moving the cryptocurrency market to see where they may be headed in the coming weeks.
Previous Crypto Report: For the previous crypto report, you can compare prices on our Issue 3 – 2024 Crypto Live Casino News.
Crypto Price Watch
(Issue 3 – March 2024 Crypto Price Update News for Live Casino Players)
Bitcoin (BTC) – The Bitcoin halving event is expected to happen on April 4th… only days away. The bulls have pulled back as BTC pushed over $70k USD following a very volatile week. The market has historically rallied before the BTC halving and pulled back shortly after, but many analysts are expecting BTC to continue its rally with some estimates as high as $99k by the end of May. BTC is currently trading at $71,281 USD and has weak support at $69K USD.
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) – Bitcoin Cash has enjoyed the rise of BTC and is up almost 100% since the last report. There are several reasons for the meteoric rise in BCH such as the halving event (impacts supply dynamics), possibility of BCH futures contracts on Coinbase (launch on April 1st) and BCH hash rates have surged three times since March 4th (miners’ confidence on BCH viability). The token is currently trading at $529 USD and just off a yearly high of $622 USD achieved on March 29th.
Litecoin (LTC) – Litecoin has followed the cryptocurrency rally in the last month and is up 27%. The token hit a yearly high a few days ago of $109 USD but it has pulled back to $101 USD before the halving event. LTC has seen a surge of inactive coins (over 600k LTC tokens) return to circulation after being dormant for 5 years. LTC’s hash rate has also hit a record high on March 22, signaling that miners are allocating more computing power to the LTC blockchain.
Tron (TRX) – After hitting a yearly high of $0.14 USD last February, the token has come off and has dropped almost 13% since the last report. The coin has come under scrutiny for dominating the illicit crypto economy. TRX has been associated with hackers from North Korea, funding terrorist groups and the purchase/sales of drugs on the darknet. Analysts believe that the criminal interest in Tron is because of the low gas fees and the price is quite stable. The coin is currently trading at $0.12 USD and is in a bullish trend.
Ripple (XRP) – Ripple hit a yearly high of $0.72 USD in early March but has dropped 12.5% since then. The company is still in court facing charges that it is an unregistered broker that is selling securities illegally. Coinbase is also in court facing similar allegations and asked the court to have the case dismissed but the judge rejected their motion. This ruling could adversely affect XRP’s court case and investors are monitoring the case very closely. Ripple is currently trading $0.63 USD and has weak support at $0.61 USD and strong resistance at $0.64 USD.
Ethereum (ETH) – A few days ago Ethereum introduced a new method for minting data on the ETH blockchain. It is called “BlobScriptions” and is part of a protocol called Ethscriptions, which is the amount needed for a blob to be included in an ETH block. The gas fees were approximately $18USD on the launch but have pulled back to about $1.20 USD. Blobs are made from converting random images or data for storage purposes. ETH is currently trading at $3,608 USD after hitting a yearly high of $4,066 USD on March 11th.
Disclaimer: All comments and prices in our cryptocurrency reports are for informational purposes. Please read up on the crypto market using websites dedicated to crypto investment advice if you wish to invest in the crypto market.
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