Bitcoin seems to be having a bad time, something its fans certainly didn't want.
The cryptocurrency fell below $10,000 again today, and the timing of the latest drop has some of its loyal followers worried. Notably, the drop came on the heels of a warning issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding “potentially illegal online platforms for trading digital assets.”.
Additionally, rumors of a major hack on the cryptocurrency exchange didn't help the situation much.
While it's impossible to say whether the statement contributed to the price drop, it's not unbelievable. After all, the SEC was clearly referring to the very exchanges that people use to buy and sell cryptocurrency.
“Many of these platforms give the appearance of performing foreign exchange functions by offering up-to-date order books and requesting pricing and execution data on the system,” the SEC noted, “but there is no reason to believe that the information has the same integrity as that provided by national securities exchanges.”
In other words, exchanges could easily put irrelevant things in place of market data – a possibility scary enough to stop even its most ardent supporter.
At the same time, users of the Binance Exchange took to Reddit to complain that their altcoins were mysteriously being sold en masse for bitcoin, without their authorization.
“What the hell is happening,” one such user asked. “Binance just sold all my altcoins, at market cap, and I only have Bitcoin now.”.
"Yes all my altcoins were sold in a minute to btc at a super premium," another redditor replied.
In response, Binance posted on Reddit that there was indeed a problem.
“We are investigating reports of some users having issues with their funds,” the statement says. “Our team is aware of and investigating the issue at this time. As of this writing, the only confirmed victims have registered API keys (for use with trading bots or otherwise).”
Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency community keeps talking about the “hack.”
Binance's statement, however, was very adamant that there was "no indication of a breach of the Binance platform.".
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao also made statements on Twitter, saying: “All users’ funds are safe.”
