Bitcoin briefly touched $28,000, and on the same day the currency tested the $28,500 level before tumbling below $28,000; hearings in the Sam Bankman-Fried case began; Russian Binance clients moved to other platforms; the Ethereum ETF launch passed without fanfare; and other events of the week drawing to a close.
Bitcoin price tests the $28,000 level
On Monday, October 2, the quotes of the first cryptocurrency surpassed $28,000. On the same day Bitcoin tested the $28,500 level, but then tumbled below $28,000.
On Thursday, October 5, the asset for the second time this week breached the psychological threshold, but again could not hold it.
As of writing, digital gold is trading at $27,800.
Most of the top-10 by market capitalization ended the week in the red. Ethereum fared the worst, down 3.9%.
Total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency market stood at $1.13 trillion. Bitcoin’s dominance index stood at 51%.
US DOJ takes a hard line against Sam Bankman-Fried in court
On October 3, began hearings in the case of the former head of the collapsed FTX Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). He has been charged with seven counts, including conspiracy to commit fraud. SBF pleaded not guilty to all counts.
Nine women and three men were selected as jurors. One of them is a 68-year-old US citizen with a master’s degree from Stanford University, where SBF’s parents studied.
The US Department of Justice has taken a hard line, describing the founder of FTX as a man who knowingly lied to investors to enrich himself and expand his crypto empire.
According to prosecutors, former FTX and Alameda staff, namely Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh, will provide jurors with insider information about SBF’s role in the alleged crimes. However the defense noted that, under a cooperation agreement, they are obligated to testify against Bankman-Fried, casting doubt on their credibility.
SBF’s lawyers said he acted in good faith, and attributed part of the blame to Ellison. The defense denies the existence of secret transactions between Alameda and FTX. According to the lawyers, all operations were legal or conducted by the exchange’s head with good intentions during the market downturn.
After opening statements, jurors heard the testimonies of two witnesses — French trader and former FTX client Mark Juilliard, and SBF’s friend Adam Yedidia.
The first said that at the time of the crypto exchange’s collapse he had 4 BTC on his accounts worth nearly $100,000. According to him, FTX’s marketing tactics instilled confidence about the platform’s security.
Yedidia spoke of his acquaintance with SBF at university and shared his first business collaboration with him. The witness worked as a trader at Alameda in 2017, but in 2021 moved to FTX as a developer.
On the day hearings began, Michael Lewis’s book Going Infinite about SBF was released. In the biography, the former crypto billionaire’s internal struggles are described, sparked by his controversial relationship with Ellison.
In the FTX collapse chapter, former CTO Nishad Singh allegedly begged SBF to insist on his innocence, though code changes directly contradicted this. Lewis wrote that Bankman-Fried once discussed repaying the Bahamas’ entire $10 billion national debt with the country’s prime minister.
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Russian Binance clients move to other platforms
After Binance’s exit from Russia, some users moved to new platforms instead of the CommEX exchange as an alternative. Overall trading activity in the country has fallen significantly, Kommersant reports.
CEO Dmitry Stepanin of Satoshkin said the P2P segment was the hardest hit. According to professional traders, the volume of peer-to-peer trades fell by 10–30%.
According to P2P.Army, at the start of 2023 the number of active ruble P2P orders on Binance reached 7,700. By summer the figure fell to 6,300, and by September to 3,400.
Stepanin added that users are mainly moving to Bybit, which has been very active in marketing of late. Huobi, Bitget, KuCoin, Gate.io also report inflows of new customers from Russia.
According to CommEX CEO Anton Toropcev, inflow to the platform will total around 1 million people. Meanwhile financial analyst Andrey Barkhota noted that Binance had only 700,000 registered Russian customers.
Also on ForkLog:
- A class-action suit filed against Binance due to the FTX collapse.
- Solana TVL reached a yearly high.
- Mistral AI unveiled a new open-source language AI model.
- Bitcoin mining difficulty updated to an all-time high again.
Binance’s share in spot trading continued to fall for the seventh month running
Binance’s share of the total spot trading volume in September fell to 34.3%. The metric has declined for the seventh consecutive month, according to CCData.
In August, the spot trading volume on the exchange stood at 38.5%, in January at 55.2%.
In the derivatives market, Binance’s dominance fell from 62.6% in January to the current 51.5%.
The Ethereum ETF launch passed without fanfare
In the first 15 minutes after the session began, trading volume of the Ethereum-ETF based on CME-traded futures did not exceed $2 million. This contrasts with the debut of similar Bitcoin-based instruments, where the figure was about 100 times higher.
Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas said the figures are broadly typical for a new ETF, but small for an asset like Ethereum.
According to the data presented by the analyst, the leader was Valkyrie’s product based on a basket of the first and second by market capitalization cryptocurrencies ($787,000). The ETF based only on Ethereum futures from VanEck barely exceeded $300,000.
Total turnover across six exchange-traded funds based on Ethereum futures for the day amounted to $1.92 million, including ProShares Ether Strategy ETF — $879,000.
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