Bitcoin (BTC) was hovering near $29,300 on Wednesday, down 3% over the past 24 hours, hours after a massive sell order on Binance and U.K. hot inflation data sent the price tumbling.
The largest cryptocurrency by market cap recently fell below $30,000 a day after regaining its perch above this psychologically important threshold and dipped as low as $29,045 at one point, according to CoinDesk data.
The decline also caught traders who were betting on an increase off guard because the majority of BTC liquidated positions were long, according to data from futures and trading platform Coinglass.
Ether (ETH) followed a similar pattern, dropping below $2,000 on Wednesday for the first time in almost a week. The second-largest cryptocurrency by market value was recently changing hands around $1,981, down over 4% from Tuesday, same time.
Most major cryptos were in the red on Wednesday, including a number of decentralized finance tokens. DeFi exchange Uniswap’s UNI and lending platform Aave’s AAVE sank 6% and 7%, respectively, to trade at around $5.90 and $74.85.
Maker’s MKR tanked by 5% to hover at around $729.31. The CoinDesk Market Index (CMI), which measures overall crypto market performance, was down 3% for the day.
“Decentralized exchanges volumes had been surging amid growing concerns about their centralized counterparts,” said The Tie CEO Joshua Frank. The Tie is a digital asset information platform.
“I think it’s likely that we see this trend continue until we get clarity on the Binance regulatory situation,” Frank said, adding that DeFi accounts for less than 5% of the overall crypto market cap.
Meanwhile, increasing regulatory scrutiny continued with the Securities and Exchange Commission reopening a proposal from last year that would target DeFi exchanges for regulation.
“Regulatory crackdowns against DeFi, concerns around security with DeFi hacks occurring regularly, and nervousness around who the counterparties actually are on DeFi platforms are likely going to continue to delay real institutional adoption,” Frank said.
