This Week in Coins: Crypto Comeback as SEC Retreats and Germany Runs Out of Bitcoin

By Andrew Throuvalas

Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt.

After weeks of “chopsolidation,” digital assets mounted a slow but steady comeback as bearish government actors lost their grip on the wider market.

Though it mostly traded sideways, the price of Bitcoin posted a modest 3.3% gain over the past seven days to enter the weekend at $57,966, having stabilized well above its $53,900 low from last Friday.

The leading crypto asset now appears all but relieved of sell-side pressure from the German government, which sent its last remaining Bitcoin to exchanges on Friday. The state’s wallet, which boasted 50,000 BTC for months until late June, has now seen its balance reduced to zero.

Bitcoin sales from Germany, the United States, and Mt. Gox creditors have been a prevailing narrative spooking all of crypto over the last several weeks. Now, with Bitcoin’s mining difficulty falling off substantially and short-term traders panic selling at a loss, on-chain analysts believe the asset may be at or close to a local bottom.

That’s good for altcoins too, which have largely performed even better than Bitcoin this week. Ethereum (ETH) closed out the week up 5.5% to $3,126, with Ethereum ETF issuers wrapping up some of their last paperwork with regulators before launching their products.

ETH holders got some regulatory relief this week after Rostin Benham—chairman of the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) —reported that ETH had been “reaffirmed” as a commodity in a federal court ruling earlier this month. Though a non-binding decision, it is something that courts can take into consideration in future crypto-related cases, including those surrounding smaller-cap tokens.

In fact, many such tokens enjoyed sizable gains this week. BNB rose by 6.8% after Paxos confirmed Thursday that the SEC has forfeited its investigation into its sister stablecoins, Binance USD (BUSD). XRP and Cardano (ADA)—both tokens that have historically faced SEC scrutiny—both rose a whopping 19%.

Further down the market cap rankings, Stacks (STX) popped by 21.5% after Hiro, the Stacks blockchain infrastructure provider, announced that the SEC had closed its 3-year investigation into the firm on Friday.

Looking at crypto stocks, MicroStrategy (MSTR) is up 6.06% over the last five trading days. On August 8, the company plans to undergo a 10-for-1 stock split, so that figure is poised to go much lower within a few weeks.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.

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