Crypto markets were rocked on Monday after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed suit against Binance, the crypto exchange giant. Bitcoin tumbled to $25.4K at one point, while Ether, the second largest crypto in market value, was recently trading at about $1,800, off more than 5% from Sunday. BNB, Binance’s exchange token, and SOL, the native cryptocurrency of the Solana blockchain, recently plunged more than 10%. Industry stocks also slumped, with Coinbase stock falling more than 9% at market close.
The SEC suit called those tokens unregistered securities, and caused traders to withdraw more than $1 billion of digital assets from Binance, compared to the $546 million in deposits. “It’s hard to pin down an element of this story that really changes the status quo,” said Strahinja Savic, head of data and analytics at Toronto-based crypto platform FRNT Financial.
Amidst the market downturn, stETH token, the native token of Lido’s staking protocol, is now the seventh largest token by market cap, right ahead of Cardano and just behind XRP, according to data from CoinGecko. “The market has grown comfortable with staking, and the market has been seeking out a staking solution that’s not going to be affected by U.S. regulatory uncertainty,” said Bob Ras, co-founder of Sologenic, a blockchain-powered network for tokenizing securities.