Shortly before Asia TradFi markets opened on Tuesday, bitcoin was slogging just above $29,200, roughly flat over the past 24 hours but still stuck in the same narrow range it’s been occupying for a week.
The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization sank from a brief early Monday morning high above $29,500 as markets absorbed the latest industry body blow, a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit against sued internet marketer Richard Schueler, known online as Richard Heart, and his projects Hex, PulseChain and PulseX, and wrestled with the fallout from an exploit of stablecoin exchange Curve.
Read More: U.S. SEC Sues Richard Heart, Hex, PulseChain on Unregistered Securities, Fraud Allegations
Bitcoin was recently outperforming Ether, the second largest crypto in market value, and other major altcoins by market capitalization. ETH was changing hands at $1,853, down 0.5% from Sunday, same time. SOL, TRX and MATIC, the tokens of smart contract platforms, Solana, Tron and Polygon, were recently off 1.8%, 2.3% and 2.2%, respectively.
Curve’s native crypto CRV was down 12.5% to trade at 56 cents. CRV traded over a dollar earlier this year. The CoinDesk Market Index, a measure of crypto markets performance, was recently up slightly.
In an email to CoinDesk, Dave Weisberger, the CEO and co-founder of algorithmic-trading platform CoinRoutes, noted altcoins downward drift following the HEX suit, although he added that it involved a “misappropriation of funds” and did not indicate anything structurally wrong with the broader market.
“In general, we’re in the dog days of summer and in turn seeing relatively low volumes for Bitcoin along with Ethereum,” Weisberger also wrote, but added that “larger-size buyers” seemed to be accumulating bitcoin as the price recently dropped.
“Sentiment has improved…,” but “…the market seems to be in a holding pattern,” he wrote.