The recent news of Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao "CZ" stepping down has made shockwaves in the cryptocurrency community.
Not only did CZ resign as CEO of Binance, he also pleaded guilty to money laundering violations involving U.S. criminal and civil charges against him and his company. Binance has since settled for $4.3 billion with the Justice Department and continues with business as usual. A new CEO has already been announced - Richard Teng, former Global Head of Regional Markets. Even though the most common consensus is that they can afford this fine easily, this attack on crypto is much bigger than just CZ and Binance.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said earlier this week that Binance supports terrorism, quoting : "It also allowed transactions associated with terrorist groups such as Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, al-Qaida and ISIS noting Binance never filed a single suspicious activity report.”
CZ has been very active on X (formerly Twitter) and a surprising number of supporters have voiced their support, calling this event "nothing but FUD". Its evident that CZ is confident in Binance's ability to carry on with their day to day business. But let's not forget, Binance isn't the only exchange that recently got into trouble with the US government. Kraken was sued for the second time this year, after paying a hefty fine only a few months earlier. Jesse Powell, CEO of Kraken, responded swiftly in a tweet by saying the US Government has "come back for seconds" and insinuated that this is a way to quickly make money whenever they need liquidity. Binance, Kraken, Coinbase and Ripple previously openly claimed to have attempted negotiations with regulators. They also claimed that this was not... forthcoming.
But the plot thickens. The recent crypto-crackdown may have origins with the SBF case.According to The Federal Newswire, Caroline Ellison (former CEO of Alameda Research) testified during Sam Bankman-Fried's fraud trial that one of her goals was to increase regulatory pressure on Binance in order to boost the market share of FTX. Ellison revealed this information during her trial on October 11. But did she really have the reach to achieve this, or could it be related to something else; happening at the same time?
BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, has been planning to launch a spot Bitcoin ETF for some time. The ETF would track the price of Bitcoin and would be accessible to BlackRock's vast client base. It's commonly known that BlackRock owns majority of shares of most companies you can think off from the top of your head. The BTC ETF is still awaiting approval from the SEC but it is expected to be approved in the near future. Here's where we have to just take a second and clarify one of the big differences between crypto and stocks : volatility. A question that could come across as controversial but worth asking; would BlackRock launch a BTC ETF if they did not have at least some control over it, considering they own 50% or more of the shares of other companies they invest in?
We're going down a bit of a rabbit hole, but let's consider it for a second. What could this mean for BTC? The crypto space could definitely become more stable, with less extreme pumps and dumps. We could perhaps see more stock-market-like behavior. In addition, the approval of a BlackRock Bitcoin ETF could make it more difficult for Binance and other exchanges to operate in the U.S. The SEC has been hostile to cryptocurrency exchanges and it is possible that the SEC crackdowns aim to encourage people to buy not from crypto exchanges, but from asset managers (such as BlackRock).
💭Final thoughts 💭 Albeit not confirmed and open to discussion... The SEC's approval of a BlackRock Bitcoin ETF could be seen as a sign that the SEC is only willing to work with large asset managers to provide investors with access to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
While you're here, let's chat about BNB coin. From the chart analysis, you may wonder why the support and resistance zones have big ranges. The reason for this is due to the "wicky" price action often observed in the weekly. This means your lower orders could trigger due to a wick that happens which goes right through two zones. This could be especially true considering the news, as it may increase the volatility of BNB.
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