Here comes Friday, April 12th. As the ongoing week elapses, we can focus on the industry highlights over the past few days.
TON hits new all-time high
On April 11, Toncoin (TON) token quotes surges past $7.6 all-time high. In fact, the asset is up about 50% so far this week.
However, the price of the coin has corrected to the $7.4 level as of this writing. According to CoinGecko, TON has a market cap totaling $25.9 billion.
TON’s positive momentum is driven by The Open Network devs’ recent initiatives, including a number of integrations with Telegram. Both the blockchain network and the messaging app have close ties, though they terminated the contract back in 2020.
Among the most notable efforts is the allocation of 1,000,000 TON (~$7.4 million) to the native community called TON Society as a way to reward participants who verify their identity using HumanCode’s palm scanning technology. Partnering with this ‘proof-of-personhood’ protocol is intended to solve the long-lasting issue around bots and fraudulent accounts as well as to introduce Web3-identification feature in Telegram.
The Treasury Department feels obliged to take additional regulatory measures due to the evolving methods of using crypto for illicit purposes, Deputy Secretary Adewale O. Adeyemo said at a U.S. Senate hearing.
The official pointed to one of the global notorious bitcoin fundraising networks which has been operating for several years through social media, referring to some of their cryptocurrency donations.
US Treasury hunts for more crypto sanctioning authorities
Adeyemo indicated that these illicit “actors” are gaining more and more ingenuity in using crypto and other virtual assets to shift funds, while also circumventing regulations. The Treasury needs to have additional enforcement avenues to monitor compliance with secondary sanctions, he said.
Adeyemo also urged legislation to expand the agency’s reach in the “digital asset ecosystem,” as well as to adopt policies that address jurisdictional challenges in regulating the crypto-driven offshore companies.
Cumulative spot bitcoin ETF trading volumes surpass $200B
Three months after launch, the aggregate trading volume of spot-exchange-traded funds based on the alpha cryptocurrency crossed $200 billion mark, as per The Block Data.
During March, the figure nearly doubled to a recordsetting $111 billion.
As reported by another data analytics provider SoSoValue, the BTC ETF saw a total trading volume of $2.91 billion as of April 9, which is well below the March 5 peak of $9.9 billion.
The ETF triad consisting of Grayscale (GBTC), BlackRock (IBIT) and Fidelity (FBTC) keeps dominating the sector. By far the major share of the trading volume over the past few days went to IBIT, topping $1.4 bln (48%) as of the last trading session.
Between Apr. 8 and Apr. 9, the funds recorded net outflows amounting to $223.8 million and $19.48 million.
The main part of the outflow still falls on GBTC – shareholders withdrew $154.9 mln from the instrument during the last session. However, the inflows in IBIT equaled $128.7 mln.
SAGA token skyrockets as high as 19000% since launch
The team at Saga, Layer 1 (L1) blockchain, went mainnet on April 9. Concurrently listed on Binance, the project’s native token shot up more than 18,700% in less than three hours.
The starting price of the $0.04 asset made it to a level of $7.89. Afterwards, the quotes flatlined – SAGA is trading below the $6 mark as of this writing.
The major part of the growth accounted for the first 15 minutes of trading, the volume of which reached an out-of-this-world $34.6m.
The renowned exchange posted its usual warning to investors regarding the token’s high volatility right on its webpage.
Being a native utility token in the ecosystem, SAGA is utilized to pay for network fees, staking, and voting (making proposals) in the governance system.
The initial supply of the asset totals 1 billion coins. As early as April 5, the token was launched on the Binance Launchpool, where 45 million of these – accounting for 4.5% of the total supply – were listed. 90 million SAGAs have been allocated to support liquidity for listing on Binance.