Here comes Friday, March 8th. As the ongoing week elapses, we can focus on the industry highlights over the past few days.
U.S. court deems crypto trading as securities transactions
Earlier this week, a court in the United States ruled in absentia that trading in certain crypto-assets is equivalent to trading in securities. Such a decision was made in an insider trading case against Coinbase.
Back in July 2022, authorities arrested the exchange’s former product manager Ishan Wahi. He was charged with insider trading, which he was able to carry out thanks to his position.
In early 2023, Ishan Wahi pleaded guilty, and afterwards he was able to settle Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claims.
The court then held that the cryptoassets traded by Wahi were recognized as securities, thus standing up to the SEC.
It should be noted that this is not the first time cryptos have been acknowledged as securities. The iconic Ripple and SEC proceedings are still in progress, and the stance of the latter is still the same.
MicroStrategy to list $600M worth of bonds
The well-known business intelligence platform is nowhere near stopping from raising more funds to buy more Bitcoin. This time, $600 million worth of convertible equities are to be issued, with the proceeds to acquire the first-ever cryptocurrency.
So far, such a trajectory of the company’s advancement is paying off – as of today, MicroStrategy has 193,000 BTC and unrealized profits totaling more than $7 billion.
These bonds are scheduled to mature in 2030, and their holders are free to request forced redemption starting in 2028.
CEO Michael Saylor notes that this is not their last bond offering, so the firm is expected to hoard BTC.
Bitcoin surges past previous all-time high
On March 5, the leading cryptocurrency hit record high. At the time of writing, BTC’s value soared to the $69,324 mark. It took a whopping 2 years for alpha cryptocurrency to renew its record high. Oddly enough, it all happened in anticipation of its next halving.
ETH also topped $3,800 level, along with BTC.
However, crypto market euphoria was short-lived, as Bitcoin quotes took a tumble immediately after the previous ATH was reached, thus sparking a cascade of liquidations. So the price of the major cryptocurrency hovered around $59,000 before bouncing back to $62,700.
There were about $680 million worth of liquidations on March 5.
Long-dormant Bitcoin wallet awakens to cash out 1000 BTC
It was on March 6 that an unknown crypto whale holding 1,000 BTC sold everything they had. What’s interesting about this is that they bought this one rack of bitcoins at as low as $0.28, back in 2010, 14 years ago. Did they hodl bitcoins on purpose or whether they simply forgot they even existed remains unknown.
In early March, the mysterious Bitcoin whale collected all the bitcoins in one wallet before transferring them to Coinbase. The crypto community speculates that selling so many bitcoins was among the reasons for the dump.
One way or another the early miner in question profited much from their anticipation, or, to be precise, over $68 million.