Crypto Market Sheds $40B as Bitcoin, Ethereum Prices Sink

Bitcoin (BTC) fell another 4% over the day, changing hands around $21,830, according to data from CoinGecko.

The drop comes just a day after the leading cryptocurrency slipped below $23,000 on Thursday, hitting a daily low of $21,696 in the process.

The last time Bitcoin was trading at these levels was on January 20 amid the New Lunar Year bull run that eventually took the price of BTC over $24,000.

Ethereum (ETH), the industry’s second-largest cryptocurrency, lost 5.4% in value over the day, currently trading around $1,545, with several other popular coins suffering even bigger losses over the past 24 hours.

These include Cardano (ADA) and Dogecoin (DOGE), which shed 6.5% and 7% over the day, respectively.

Solana (SOL) is down 7.9% over the day, followed by Avalanche (AVAX) and Polkadot (DOT), with the latter two losing 8.4% and 8.8% in value, respectively.

The combined market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies, which stood at $1.1 trillion yesterday, sank to $1.06 trillion at the time of this writing, per CoinGecko.

Kraken crackdown rocks crypto

The industry was rocked on Wednesday was the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) slapping crypto exchange Kraken with a $30 million fine for violating securities laws after it failed to register the offer and sale of its staking-as-a-service program.

Though Kraken did not confirm or deny the allegations in the SEC’s complaint, the exchange agreed to halt its staking service for U.S. clients.

This blow to the exchange may also have long-term implications for the broader crypto landscape.

According to Matrixport head of research Markus Thielen, “the SEC enforcement is negative for the industry” as it once again excluded Americans.

However, Kraken, which saw as much as $2.7 billion in crypto staked on the exchange to date, can still offer staking for non-U.S. investors.

“As the SEC has so far not even approved a Bitcoin spot ETF, it seems unlikely that the agency would have approved a slightly more obscure product like staking,” wrote Thielen in a note Friday, adding that neither staking nor crypto will go away as the result of this and the winners will likely be non-U.S. staking providers.