Bitcoin returned to gains today by more than 1.5% this morning and consolidated above the $70,000 level again, while Ethereum was able to maintain levels above $3,500.
Today’s gains in cryptocurrencies come even with the regulatory developments return to the forefront again regarding the major names in the market, whether from Coinbase or Ethereum.
The market was exposed to some pressure yesterday with a federal court rejecting Coinbase’s request to dismiss the lawsuit filed against it by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the previous year in the case of providing unlicensed financial services.
While this will not be followed by direct procedures, rather the next steps may take months, in the “discovery process” in which both parties to the prosecution exchange information and documents regarding the case to prepare sufficient evidence for each of them, according to FOX Business.
This development comes with a previous move by the SEC in recent days to conduct a possible investigation targeting the Ethereum developer, the Ethereum Foundation, with it likely that this step comes with the authority’s effort to classify the second largest cryptocurrency in the world as a security and not a commodity.
While it is believed that this potential classification comes in anticipation of the rejection of asset managers’ requests to launch Ethereum spot ETFs. While BlackRock CEO, Larry Fink, believes that these ETFs can be approved even if Ethereum is already classified as securities. Accordingly, it appears that the SEC is trying to enhance the scope of its supervision of the most widely used cryptocurrency network ever.
All of this also comes as the activity of crypto derivatives market has increased significantly. The volume of open interest on Deribit Bitcoin futures reached a new record high of more than $1.3 billion.
Tomorrow also marks the exercise date of the notional value of more than $9.6 billion out of the 26.8 billion outstanding Bitcoin options that have a put/call ratio of 0.84. While we see that the levels at 65,000 and 60,000 alone have call options worth about $700 million, according to Deribit as well. This may seem to be a market belief that these levels represent buying opportunities, given Bitcoin’s ability to consolidate above them since it recently reached its highest record levels.
Ethereum options at Deribit are also witnessing increased activity, with the number of open interest rising to the highest level this year with more than 3.5 million options contracts with a notional value of more than $13 billion. While more than 5.6 billion of these options have an execution date of tomorrow, with a put/call ratio of 0.63.
