Bitcoin, Ether drop; top altcoins in the red

Altcoins have suffered from the US SEC’s clampdown on tokens that they consider financial securities

Bitcoin and Ether dropped on Wednesday but stayed above key price levels, while most of the top altcoins were in the red. The altcoin bear market could last another two to six months because of the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) moves against these tokens, industry experts told Forkast.

Bitcoin dropped 0.21 per cent to $30,735. Ether declined 0.61 per cent to trade at $1,929, staying above $1,900 since Sunday.

On Tuesday, the price of Bitcoin, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, advanced to $31,371, its highest level since June 2022, over hopes about spot Bitcoin ETF applications by several Wall Street heavyweights.

While Bitcoin as well as Ether stay firmly above key psychological marks, altcoins appear to lack momentum compared to the two biggest cryptocurrencies.

The delisting of certain assets from US cryptocurrency exchanges in June has underlined a distinction in asset performance that has existed since the beginning of the bear market in 2021, Jamie Coutts, a senior market structure analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, told Forkast.

Assets considered commodities, Bitcoin and Ethereum (although not enshrined), have generated a combined return short of 70 per cent YTD and are 58 per cent from their all-time peaks. In the meantime, securities have averaged a meagre 18.87 per cent to 84 per cent below their all-time highs, stated Coutts, adding that the altcoin bear market could last another two to six months.

Altcoins have suffered from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s clampdown on tokens that they consider financial securities. Solana, Cardano, Polygon and BNB were among those that the regulator labelled as unregistered securities in its lawsuits filed against the Coinbase and Binance.US exchanges in early last month.

Litecoin was the day’s biggest decliner among the top cryptocurrencies, shedding 2.65 per cent to $104.49, followed by Binance’s BNB token that lost 1.20 per cent during the last 24 hours to trade at $242.29.

Dogecoin rose 0.45 per cent to $0.06858, followed by Solana’s Sol token that added 0.26 per cent to $19.20, as the day’s only two advancers among the top cryptos.

The total crypto market cap over the past 24 hours lost 0.89 per cent to $1.2trln and market volume dropped 27.35 per cent to $27.24bln, as per CoinMarketCap data.