Crypto Market Reels in Losses Despite EU Deciding Against BTC Ban
Crypto price chart opened with red taking over as majority altcoins dipped in losses following Bitcoin. With a small loss of –0.87 percent, Bitcoin opened trading at $40,319 (roughly Rs. 30 lakh) on Indian exchange CoinSwitch Kuber. The world’s oldest cryptocurrency also saw similar minor magnitude of losses on international exchanges as well. On CoinMarketCap and Binance for instance, BTC lost around 0.15 in terms of its trading value. At the time of writing, Bitcoin was priced around $38,745 (roughly Rs. 29.5 lakh) on global exchanges.
Ether found itself bearing slightly bigger losses than Bitcoin. The world’s second-most valued cryptocurrency dipped by 3.07 percent to trade at around $2,649 (roughly Rs. 2 lakh) as per Gadgets 360’s crypto price tracker. ETH reeled in smaller losses on global exchanges, surprisingly. On Binance for instance, the altcoin is trading at $2,542 (roughly Rs. 1.95 lakh).
The shift in the crypto market comes in the backdrop of the European Union (EU) rejecting a proposal to ban Bitcoin. The decision makes for a milestone ruling that indirectly works in favour of the crypto sector by buying it more time to mature.
EU’s digital assets legislation, called the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) had backed its Bitcoin banning proposal citing its energy-intensive mining processes.
BREAKING: The ECON committee of the EU Parliament just voted against the de-facto POW-ban: 32 against, 24 in favor.
Big relief & political success for the bitcoin & crypto community in the EU:muscle::muscle:
Will share a breakdown of the vote and what’s next here in this thread. #Bitcoin
— Patrick Hansen (@paddi_hansen) March 14, 2022
Binance Coin, Ripple, Cardano, Polkadot, and Polygon also lost steam, stepping right into mid-March.
Dogecoin plummeted back to the trenches after a brief gain period it observed on March 14. Tesla CEO Elon Musk had contributed to DOGE’s price hike by saying he would not sell his crypto holdings despite risks of inflation.
DOGE rival Shiba Inu also failed to garner any profits.
Industry insiders have supported more ‘regulate over restrict’ approach towards the crypto sector, which emerged as the premise of EU’s vote on MiCA.
“As crypto continues to gain traction amongst the mainstream and cement its position as the future of finance, it is necessary to embrace sustainable regulations that balances industry growth with environmental impact. The EU’s regulatory steps could herald in a new era of greater sustainability in the crypto sector globally,” the research team at CoinDCX told Gadgets 360.
Earlier on March 14, Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor reiterated his support for Bitcoin as a hedge against a rise in inflation.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s emphasis on restricting crypto assets for Russians continues to fuel crypto’s reputation as a mighty economic instrument.
After requesting global crypto exchanges to suspend services to Russia, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, urged Tether to stop doing business with Russian citizens.
Tether is a stablecoin, a category of crypto assets collateralised by the value of an underlying ‘stable’ reserve assets like gold or dollar. So even when regular crypto assets see their prices axed, stablecoins could continue reeling-in profits.
The case was slightly unconventional today as several stablecoins like USD Coin and Binance USD saw losses, however small ones.
The current crypto market cap stands at over $1.72 trillion (roughly Rs. 1,31,73,856 crore), as per CoinMarketCap.
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