Bitcoin (BTC) slid modestly lower through the U.S. trading day, dipping to as low as $29,150 Monday afternoon as digital asset investors grappled with the aftermath of a major exploit in decentralized finance (DeFi), a fresh lawsuit against Hex founder Richard Heart and macroeconomic headwinds. The largest cryptocurrency by market value was down 0.6% over the past 24 hours, while the CoinDesk Market Index (CMI) was faring a bit worse, down just over 1%. Ether (ETH), the second-largest crypto by market capitalization, was lower by about 1%.
Smaller cryptocurrencies underperformed the CMI’s 1% decline, with the native tokens of layer 1 blockchain Solana (SOL), Tron (TRX) and Avalanche (AVAX) each sinking 3-4%. DeFi tokens were particularly under pressure due to yesterday’s exploit against Curve Finance, where an attacker siphoned more than $50 million of assets from the key DeFi exchange. The protocol’s CRV governance token was down 10% over the last 24 hours to 55 cents, while Curve-adjacent Convex Finance’s CVX dropped 10.6%. Other large DeFi tokens also struggled, with AAVE, Compound’s CMP and Maker’s MKR losing between 5% and 11%.
The news of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) suing Hex founder Richard Heart and his projects Hex, PulseChain and PulseX for raising over a $1 billion by offering unregistered securities caused HEX to tumble 18%. Singapore-based QCP Capital noted that “the market anticipates a rise in volatility and a possible significant BTC price increase by year’s end due to factors like the Blackrock spot ETF ruling and the Bitcoin Halving, with Accumulators emerging as an effective strategy for accredited investors to acquire coins at discounted prices steadily.”
Galaxy Digital’s Mike Novogratz recently said in an interview with Bloomberg that “the most important thing that happened this year in Bitcoin is Larry Fink,” emphasizing his boosted bullishness about the world’s largest digital currency following the asset management giant’s spot bitcoin ETF filing. Joe DiPasquale, the CEO of crypto fund manager BitBull Capital, said bitcoin’s ability to shrug off macroeconomic events, or even material technical events like the Curve Finance exploit, has created a recent “sustained sentiment shift” to the upside in the markets.
The Bank of Japan (BOJ) last week softened its grip on the country’s bond market, suggesting it would let yields rise beyond the tight 50 basis point limit it had previously set. Digital asset market research firm Kaiko noted that “BTC has historically moved in the opposite direction to global Treasury yields and bond volatility.”