Results of the week: Bitcoin tested $28,000

The first cryptocurrency tested $28,000, hearings began in the case of Sam Bankman-Fried, Russian clients of Binance moved to other platforms, the launch of Ethereum-ETF passed without a stir, and other events of the past week.

Bitcoin price tested the $28,000 level

On Monday, October 2, quotes of the first cryptocurrency exceeded $28,000. On the same day, Bitcoin tested the level of $28,500, but then fell below $28,000.

On Thursday, October 5, the asset crossed the psychological threshold for the second time in a week, but again failed to maintain it.

At the time of writing, digital gold is trading at $27,800.

Most of the top 10 digital assets by capitalization ended the week in the red zone. Ethereum lost the most (-3.9%).

The total capitalization of the cryptocurrency market is $1.13 trillion. Bitcoin dominance index – 51%.

The US Department of Justice takes a tough stance against Sam Bankman-Fried in court

On October 3, hearings began in the case of the former head of the collapsed FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). He is charged with seven criminal counts, including conspiracy to commit fraud. SBF pleaded not guilty to any of the charges.

The parties selected nine women and three men as jurors. One of them is a 68-year-old US citizen with a master’s degree from Stanford University, where SBF’s parents studied.

The US Department of Justice took a tough line, calling the founder of FTX a man who deliberately lied to investors in order to enrich himself and expand his crypto empire.

Former FTX and Alameda employees Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang and Nishad Singh will provide jurors with inside information about SBF’s role in the alleged crimes, prosecutors said. However, the defense pointed out that as part of the cooperation agreement they agreed to testify against Bankman-Fried, which raises doubts about their credibility.

SBF’s lawyers said he “acted in good faith” and placed some of the blame on Ellison. The defense denies the existence of secret transactions between Alameda and FTX. According to lawyers, all transactions were legal or carried out by the head of the exchange with good intentions during a market downturn.

After opening statements, the jury heard testimony from two witnesses – French trader and former FTX client Mark Julliard, and SBF friend Adam Yedidia.

The first said that at the time of the collapse of the crypto exchange, he had 4 BTC in his accounts worth almost $100,000. According to him, FTX’s marketing tactics gave him confidence about the security of the platform.

Yedidia spoke about his acquaintance with SBF at the university and shared his first experience of business cooperation with it. The witness worked at Alameda as a trader in 2017, but in 2021 moved to FTX as a developer.

On the day the hearings began, a book dedicated to SBF, Going Infinite, by writer Michael Lewis, was published. Bankman-Fried’s biography reveals the ex-crypto billionaire’s internal struggles over his controversial relationship with Ellison.

The chapter on the FTX collapse states that ex-CTO Nishad Singh pleaded with the SBF to insist he was not involved, even though code changes directly contradicted this. Lewis wrote that Bankman-Fried once discussed paying off the Bahamas’ entire $10 billion national debt with the country’s prime minister.

What to discuss with friends?

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• The meager commission brought the crypto trader a win of $310,000.

Russian Binance clients switched to other platforms

After Binance left the Russian Federation, some users switched to new platforms instead of the alternative in the form of the CommEX exchange. At the same time, overall trade activity in the country has decreased significantly, Kommersant reports.

Satoshkin CEO Dmitry Stepanin said that the P2P segment suffered the most. According to professional traders, the volume of peer-to-peer transactions has decreased by 10-30%.

According to P2P.Army, at the beginning of 2023, the number of active ruble P2P orders on Binance reached 7,700. By the summer, the figure dropped to 6,300, and in September – to 3,400.

Stepanin added that first of all, users are switching to Bybit, which “has been very active in marketing recently.” Huobi, Bitget, KuCoin, Gate.io also record an influx of new clients from Russia.

According to estimates by CommEX CEO Anton Toroptsev, the influx to the site will be about 1 million people. At the same time, financial analyst Andrei Barkhota noted that only 700,000 Russian clients were registered on Binance.

Also on ForkLog:

• A class action lawsuit has been filed against Binance due to the collapse of FTX.
• Solana’s TVL reached a yearly high.
• Mistral AI has introduced a new open-source AI language model.
• Bitcoin mining difficulty has again reached an all-time high.

Binance’s share of spot trading continued to decline for the seventh month in a row.

The Binance cryptocurrency exchange’s share of total spot trading volume fell to 34.3% in September. The indicator declined for the seventh month in a row, according to CCData.

In August, the volume of spot trading on the exchange was 38.5%, in January – 55.2%.

In the derivatives market, Binance’s dominance has fallen from 62.6% in January to the current 51.5%.

The launch of Ethereum-based ETF went off without any fuss

In the first 15 minutes after the start of the session, the trading volume of Ethereum-ETF based on those traded on CME futures did not exceed $2 million. This contrasts with the debut of similar Bitcoin-based instruments, where the figure was 100 times higher.

According to Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas, these figures are generally typical for the new ETF, but “small” for an asset like Ethereum.

According to the data presented by the specialist, the leader was the product from Valkyrie based on a basket of the first and second cryptocurrencies by capitalization ($787,000). VanEck’s Ethereum futures-only ETF barely broke $300,000.

In total, the turnover for six exchange-traded funds based only on Ethereum futures at the end of the day amounted to $1.92 million, including $879,000 for the ProShares Ether Strategy ETF.

What else to read?

This week we talked about what zkSync is and what the difference is between Web3 and Web 3.0.

The decentralized finance sector continues to attract increased attention from cryptocurrency investors. ForkLog has collected the most important events and news of recent weeks in a digest.

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