Bitcoin ended higher last Thursday after erasing earlier losses as Ukraine conflict started. Bitcoin price rebounded after touching the support on February 24 and is rising currently. As the BTCUSD daily chart below indicates, the trend is bullish – Bitcoin price will continue rising to test the Fibonacci 38.2 resistance at $46701!
Crypto currencies’ initial response to the start of fighting in Ukraine was similar – they fell sharply, led by an 18% decline for Cardano's ADA and a 14% fall for Solana's SOL, followed by Ethereum down 12% and Bitcoin down nearly 10% to $35,000. The total capitalization of the crypto market fell over 8%. However crypto currencies erased most of their earlier daily losses and are on rebound.
It looks like Bitcoin and similar blockchain currencies dodged a bullet last Friday as the European Parliament postponed the vote on crypto regulations seeking to ban the use of cryptocurrencies that rely on proof-of-work Indefinitely. According to the provisions, crypto firms would be unable to provide services that require the use of proof-of-work based cryptocurrencies starting in January 2025. Proof-of-work is energy-intensive computing process and both Bitcoin and Ethereum currently rely on proof-of-work.
Ethereum got an unexpected support the same day as one of its mining pools- Flexpool, cut services to Russian users. Flexpool, the world's fifth-largest Ethereum mining pool, halted all services to Russia last Friday to show solidarity with Ukraine. Cutting access to mining pool services effectively restricts mining and so the supply of the Ethereum token. And lower supply of Ethereum means a boost for Ethereum's price.
And reports informing of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) first ruling against a crypto currencies lending platform indicate SEC considers cryptocurrencies lending products as securities subject to its regulation. Several reports informed today of SEC ruling of February 14, 2022 against BlockFi Lending. BlockFi sold financial product known as BlockFi Interest Accounts in which investors could lend their crypto assets to BlockFi in exchange for BlockFi's promise to provide a monthly interest payment in cryptocurrency. As a result of this enforcement action, BlockFi agreed to pay a penalty of $50 million to the SEC and additional $50 million in fines to settle with 32 states that had brought similar charges.
