Proactive Investors - Bitcoin is enjoying its most sustained support near US$30,000 for over two months, rising 5.2% over the past 24 hours, while legal challenges at Ripple and Genesis were also making headlines.
Starting with bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency was holding in a tight band between US$29,200 and US$29,300 early on Friday, before taking another leg higher to $29,849.
Today is the day that is expected to see a legal decision on what could be the first spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), according to a Bloomberg report.
A court in Washington DC is pencilled in to issue a mandate backing a legal opinion in August in favour of a Grayscale Investments lawsuit against the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the conversion of its GBTC trust into an ETF, with the SEC last week opting against appealing the previous ruling, which it had lost.
The SEC was also in similar crypto news elsewhere, as the financial watchdog dropped a legal challenge against Ripple Labs.
Ripple issued a statement calling it “a stunning capitulation by the government”, following years of the two sides butting heads over whether or not XRP should be classified as a security.
XRP jumped 7% to $0.513334, still well down from the highs above $0.80 after the July legal decision, but up 14% over the past 12 months.
US prosecutors have accused three high-profile cryptocurrency firms of defrauding investors of more than $1bn.
Elsewhere, the New York attorney-general has sued the crypto exchange Gemini, owned by the Winklevoss twins, for lying to customers about the risks of a high-yielding crypto investment account it offered.
Cryptocurrency conglomerate Digital Currency Group and its collapsed crypto lending arm Genesis are also included in the $1.1 billion fraud lawsuit.
It alleges the companies lied to more than 230,000 investors over the safety of their crypto investments when prices of popular tokens such as bitcoin tumbled sharply last year.
The account was halted shortly after the collapse of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange run by Sam Bankman-Fried, last November, which cut off access to customers’ funds which it said was to fend off a bank run.
Offering returns of up to 7%, Gemini had lent customer assets to Genesis to boost the returns, with Genesis then loaning them to other investors, including crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research.
Genesis filed for bankruptcy in January and the SEC charged Gemini and Genesis with offering unregistered securities to investors.
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