Bitcoin, SHIB and altcoins have been falling gradually for a long time. However, crises and collapses such as Celsius, 3AC and Terra continue to negatively affect the market. Now, 2 new events have been added to these crises. So how will they affect the cryptocurrency market and prices?
Solana goes to court
Mark Young, a California-based SOL investor, has filed a lawsuit against Solana developers. Accordingly, the investor claims that their SOLs are ‘unregistered securities’. The lawsuit says Solana Labs, the Solana Foundation, and the project’s co-founder, Anatoly Yakovenko, are the defendants. The SOL investor who filed the lawsuit alleges that the Solana developers violated US securities laws for SOL. Young’s claim comes after US senators introduced a law regulating Bitcoin and altcoins. The bill wants cryptocurrencies to be covered by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) instead of the SEC.
However, Young’s claims do not end with the above. The lawsuit alleges that the Solana developers made statements that deliberately misrepresented the total circulating supply of SOL. In April 2020, Solana said at its first ICO that it was funding developers to promote the SOL project. According to the plaintiff, the news of the promotion turned an obscure altcoin into a leading cryptocurrency. Meanwhile, Solana (SOL) price recovered this week, up 16.44% in the last 7 days. As Cryptokoin.com reported, SOL price was trading at $37.80, up 3.04% in the last 24 hours.
Leading Bitcoin exchange will pay back its creditors
Mt. Gox Trustee has announced that they will reimburse creditors of the defunct cryptocurrency exchange. Once the largest crypto exchange, Tokyo-based Mt. Gox suspended all trading and went offline in February 2014. The exchange had lost a total of 850,000 Bitcoins worth $500 million at the time. Now, exactly 8 years later, they have recovered some of these Bitcoins. The trustee currently holds 141,686 BTC, some cash and other Bitcoin Cash. These accessible Bitcoins are worth about $3 billion at the current price.
The trustee also told creditors how they would like to receive their repayments. However, now the bigger question has arisen. Once creditors have their BTC, will they hold or sell them? Mt. Gox was dissolved in February 2014, the price of Bitcoin was trading around $600. These BTC holders are already sitting at 36 times the current price. Accordingly, creditors are very likely to sell BTC on the open market. Speaking to Bloomberg, crypto investor Aaron Brown said that selling could push the BTC price down.
Selling pressure likely to continue for Bitcoin
There has been a brutal correction in Bitcoin and the overall crypto space in the last quarter. In the second quarter of 2022, the value of Bitcoin halved due to various factors such as worsening macros, the Terra crash, massive liquidations, crypto firm bankruptcies. As a result, there is persistent selling pressure on BTC. Also, Bitcoin miners who hold large amounts in their wallets sell their BTC holdings to cover their operating costs. Some major BTC mining players still haven’t made any sales. But they are likely to do so in the future. BTC mining giant Marathon said it currently holds more than 10,055 BTC. He also stated that he has not made any sales since October 2020. However, the production of Bitcoin seems to increase in the near future. Therefore, he added, he may sell some of his assets to cover operating costs.