Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and other major cryptocurrencies traded lower at press time but some altcoins remained buoyant as the global cryptocurrency market cap rose 0.2% to $2.19 trillion on Wednesday night.
What Happened: BTC traded 4.14% lower at $45,087.16 over 24 hours and was down 7.59% over a seven-day period.
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Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), the second-largest coin by market cap, was down 0.91% at $3,423.55 over 24 hours. For the week, ETH has fallen 9.45%.
Meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) was down 2% at $0.25 over 24 hours and has declined 17.07% over the period of a week.
Meanwhile, Solana (CRYPTO: SOL) traded 9.15% higher at $186.70 over 24 hours. SOL has shot up 67.12% over seven days.
SOL hit a fresh all-time high of $201.07 on Wednesday, crossing the $200 threshold and displacing XRP (CRYPTO: XRP) to emerge as the sixth-largest coin by market cap.
XRP fell sharply by 28.71% to $0.81 over 24 hours and is down 33.72% for the week.
The top gainer over 24 hours on Wednesday was Algorand (CRYPTO: ALGO), which soared 59.56% to $2.04 over 24 hours. For the week, ALGO is up 78.43%.
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Against BTC and ETH, ALGO rose 71.35% and 65.18% over 24 hours, respectively.
Other notable gainers over 24 hours were IOST (CRYPTO: IOST), Harmony (CRYPTO: ONE), and NEAR Protocol (CRYPTO: NEAR).
IOST shot up 46.13% to $0.078, ONE rose 20.33% to $0.145, and NEAR was up 19.27% at $10.19 in the period.
Why It Matters: Bitcoin’s decline for the second straight day — after El Salvador adopted the cryptocurrency as legal tender — comes amid prevalent negative sentiment surrounding regulatory action.
Alexandra Clark, a sales trader at the UK-based digital asset broker GlobalBlock in a note said that the market posted losses in a “buy the [rumor], sell the fact” chain of events.
Clark said $410 billion was wiped from the market value and $3 billion in long positions liquidated. As per the analyst, while most of the cryptocurrency market slid with BTC, in effect, “demonstrating the relative immaturity of the asset class and the market’s dependency on BTC” there were exceptions."
On the regulatory front, last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was reported to be looking into Uniswap (CRYPTO: UNI), one of the larger decentralized exchanges.
On Wednesday, Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ:COIN) CEO Brian Armstrong said the SEC has threatened to sue the company should it go ahead and launch its cryptocurrency lending product dubbed “Lend.”
Armstrong lambasted the market regulator in a series of tweets and called the regulator’s behavior “sketchy.
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