Binance Coin Falls 5% Overnight, Bitcoin Tops $17,000 (Market Watch)

The cryptocurrency market saw signs of recovery in the last 24 hours, which proved to be particularly eventful. The total capitalization is around $880 billion, as BTC tops $17,000 again.

The Battle for $17K

The Bitcoin bulls seem committed to defending the $17K level, preventing the bears from initiating significant moves to the downside.

Yesterday, the price fell below that level, but buyers were quick to pick it back up and push it back above it. At the time of writing, BTC is found at around $17,200 (on Binance), showing an increase of 1.4% in the last 24 hours.

It is worth noting that this comes at a time of major developments in the industry. Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested earlier in the Bahamas at the request of the US government. The press release announcing the arrest states:

“The Bahamas and the United States have a shared interest in holding accountable all individuals associated with FTX who may have betrayed the public trust and broken the law. While the United States is pursuing criminal charges against SBF individually, The Bahamas will continue its own regulatory and criminal investigations into the collapse of FTX, with continued cooperation with its law enforcement and regulatory partners in the United States and elsewhere.”

BNB gets a beating

It seems that there is an ongoing storm of negativity towards the world’s largest crypto exchange – Binance. Yesterday, a Reuters report cited sources as saying that some US prosecutors are reportedly looking to indict the exchange and its chief executive. However, the sources also said other prosecutors from the same investigation believe additional evidence is needed. In any case, it concerns a case that started in 2018.

Today, CZ revealed that there has been an influx of USDC withdrawal requests and they are not being processed immediately because they have to go through a New York bank that doesn’t open until a few hours later. He also assured that users are free to withdraw any other stablecoin, such as USDT or BUSD.

Regardless, this has negatively impacted the price of Binance Coin, which is currently down over 5% in the last 24 hours.

The rest of the market is also quite volatile, although there is an obvious attempt at recovery.