Crypto News: Coinbase vs The SEC, New House Rules, NFT Trades Free Fall

Cryptocurrency prices appear to be on the mend as the indices push above their 50-day lines. Bitcoin is up nearly 13% this week and is trading above $23,000 for the first time since mid-June. Ethereum recovered the $1,600 level, which it also lost in the middle of last month. But NFTs are not seeing the same increase, and marketplace volume is on track for its worst month in a year. In other crypto news, the House Financial Services Committee plans to advance new stablecoin rules next week. And Coin base (COIN) hits back at SEC over its insider trading probe.

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Crypto News: NFT Trading Volume

Looks like people are getting bored with Bored Apes. Data collected from The Block shows NFT’s monthly marketplace volume is on pace with the lowest level since July last year. NFT trading volume is at $368.98 million so far this month, only slightly higher than last year’s $366.75 million. Marketplace volume fell 93% from its January peak of $16.57 billion to $1.04 billion in June. About 74% of this fall occurred between May and June.

Even NFT scammers seem to have lost interest. The LooksRare marketplace is notorious for wash trading, where individuals trade with each other to artificially inflate the price and volume of their assets. LooksRare volume fell from a record $11.1 billion in January to $214.34 million in June. So far, LooksRare volume is $89.48 million for the month.

Excluding LooksRare, total NFT marketplace volume is $279.5 million so far for July. OpenSea is by far the largest marketplace and accounted for USD 228.96 million of the sales volume. That’s down 67% from $696.73 million last month and well below corn’s $2.6 billion trade volume.

And Bored Ape Yacht Club doesn’t get the same hype it used to. This is the third highest grossing NFT pool with a total of $2.3 billion in trading volume. But it fell to $38.2 million in July from a peak of $346.7 million in January.

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Stablecoin scrutiny

The House Financial Services Committee aims to advance its stablecoin bill as soon as July 27, according to reports from Bloomberg. The current draft of the bill would require issuers to maintain 100% reserves and ban the lending of stablecoins to customers. It will cover both bank and non-bank issuers. And the Federal Reserve would license and insure non-bank stablecoin issuers. The bill will also set new rules for which assets can be used as pegs to maintain value and prevent commercial companies from issuing coins. Finally, the proposed ruling would change the name of the assets to “stable coins.”

Coinbase Blasts SEC

In Securities and Exchange Commission-related crypto news, a former Coinbase product manager was charged with wire fraud Thursday in an alleged $1.5 million crypto insider trading scheme. Prosecutors say Ishan Wahi, who worked in Asset List, tipped off his brother and a friend about which cryptocurrencies Coinbase would add. The group traded 25 different tokens before at least 14 public listing announcements dating back to last summer, hiding the profits in various anonymous wallets, authorities say.

The SEC filed a civil complaint against them, alleging that nine of the traded cryptocurrencies are securities. Seven of these nine are listed on Coinbase. Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal hit back at the SEC in a blog post Thursday.

“Coinbase does not list securities on its platform. Period.” he wrote. Grewal says it has a rigorous review process to ensure securities are not listed, something the SEC considered.

The company also filed a regulatory filing with the SEC on Thursday to provide a clear regulatory framework for digital asset securities.

Last month, authorities charged a former OpenSea employee with using inside information to profit from NFTs.

Follow Harrison Miller for more news and stock updates on Twitter @IBD_Harrison.

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