2.40pm: Former Celsius head Alex Mashinsy arrested
Ex-Celsius chief Alex Mashinsky has been arrested on fraud charges brought by three US regulators.
Federal prosecutors in New York charge 57-year-old Mashinsky of manipulating cryptocurrency prices between 2018 and 2022.
He “orchestrated a scheme to defraud customers of Celsius Network LLC and its related entities,” read the indictment.
Celsius was a major cryptocurrency lender offering high yields to customers.
The company collapsed in May 2022 due to the unsustainability of these yields, filing for bankruptcy in July.
US regulators the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Federal Trade Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission proceeded to file civil suits against Mashinsky.
Mashinsky and his company have been accused of issuing deceptive statements aimed at enticing investors to buy Celsius’ native CEL token and to invest in the Earn Interest Program, which claimed to offer returns as high as 17% on cryptocurrency deposits.
The SEC further alleged that Mashinsky misrepresented the financial performance of Celsius by exaggerating its profitability.
9am: Bitcoin barely budges
Promising US inflation data was insufficient to drag bitcoin (BTC) out of its prolonged sideways trade, with the BTC/USDT pair closing Wednesday 0.8% lower at US$30,370.
Bitcoin has remained essentially unchanged this morning, swapping for US$30,400 at the time of writing.
US CPI inflation slowed to 3% in June, the lowest level since March 2021, beating market expectations of 3.1%.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq index rallied by more than 1% after the announcement of the data, and while bitcoin did briefly see some upside, it wasn’t enough to motivate a sustained bull run.
Bitcoin remains locked in a sideways trading channel between 30k and 31k, where it has largely been trapped for three weeks now.
Even news of a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) being approved in Amsterdam for the first time couldn’t push bitcoin higher.
Bitcoin ETFs are a hot topic right now, with the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock trying to persuade hawkish US regulators to approve its spot bitcoin ETF.
Speculation on an approval pushed bitcoin above US$30,000 in June, but a lack of further news has caused the benchmark cryptocurrency to plateau.
Bitcoin hits three-week sideways trade – Source: currency.com
Bitcoin trading volumes remain at historically low levels, causing speculation on how long it can sustain the current spot price.
Bitcoin dominance is hovering around 51.5%, a slight tapering off from last month's 52%-plus highs, but still indicative of a substantial concentration of investor interest in the crypto space towards bitcoin.
In the meantime, BTC/USDT appears fairly evenly balanced between the bulls and the bears, suggesting a sideways trade could persist.
On the Ethereum (ETH) front, the second-largest cryptocurrency closed Wednesday 0.3% lower at US$1,871, where it has remained this morning.
In the wider altcoin space, Solana (SOL) was heavily overbought at US$21.83, a 10% week-on-week gain. SOL is the only blue chip to post double-digit growth in the past week, despite no obvious catalyst.
Global cryptocurrency market capitalisation currently stands at US$1.18tn, having dipped 1.1% overnight.