Filecoin has a silver lining despite SEC-induced FUD: Here’s why

• The latest FUD affected the speculative interest for FIL as investors shied away from opening new trading positions.
• FIL’s transaction volume declined, suggesting that market participants were trying to tread cautiously.

Following the negative effects of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) designation of Filecoin [FIL] as a security, which resulted in a sharp fall on 18 May, the decentralized storage network coin has seen some rebound, rising marginally by 0.18% in the last 24 hours.

How much are 1,10,100 FILs worth today?

However, the FUD was still far from over as the weighted sentiment continued to be in the negative territory. The overall impact of the wider market slump since mid-April was what ultimately drove this, not just the regulatory pressure from the SEC.

FIL’s transaction volume also declined since the event, suggesting that market participants were trying to tread cautiously.

Source: Santiment

Development activity in full swing

An interesting aspect of Filecoin’s growth trajectory was brought to attention by blockchain analytics firm, Token Terminal. The company took to Twitter to highlight that Filecoin’s core developer count has been increasing steadily since its launch in 2014, a stark contrast to FIL’s downtrend price action over the same time period.

Filecoin core developer count is trending up, FIL price is trending down.

Is the market missing something? pic.twitter.com/ZCe53CAgUY

— Token Terminal (@tokenterminal) May 19, 2023

Simply put, core developers design the security and architecture of blockchain systems. A closer look at the data revealed that even in the last 30 days, there was a marked divergence between the development activity and the asset’s price.

Source: Token Terminal

Moreover, as the core developer count has increased, the number of code commits to Filecoin’s public GitHub repositories also saw an uptick.

Source: Token Terminal

The encouraging response from developers might be due to Filecoin’s recently announced grants program, which intended to give financial support to people looking to build on the network.

Do you have an idea for pushing the Filecoin ecosystem forward? 🙋‍♂️Visit the Open Developer Grants GitHub to learn more about the available opportunities, like;
⚒️Dev & Data Tooling
📱Applications
🤝Integrations
🔬Research
Check it out: https://t.co/ePQMHREJ6E

— Filecoin (@Filecoin) May 20, 2023

FIL bearish sentiment increases

The latest FUD affected the speculative interest for FIL as investors shied away from opening new trading positions. Data from Coinglass revealed a sharp fall in Open Interest (OI) over the last 10 days.

Source: Coinglass

Realistic or not, here’s FIL market cap in BTC’s terms

Most of the new positions were being opened with bearish intent as the Longs/Shorts Ratio dipped further over the last 24 hours.

Source: Coinglass

SEC’s attack on Filecoin is the latest in a string of regulatory shots fired by the regulator on crypto market participants in 2023. This action occurs at the same time as Coinbase, a major American cryptocurrency exchange, is trying to get greater regulatory clarity from the SEC.