First Mover Asia: SEC Appealing XRP Ruling Isn’t Moving Markets

Good morning. Here’s what’s happening:

Prices: The market seems to have confidence that the SEC’s move to appeal the favorable Ripple ruling isn’t going to lead to much.

Insights: Curve exploit fiasco revealed the susceptibility in the DeFi space, and what is a Bart pattern?

Both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) are trading flat in Asia as the region begins its business day.

The world’s largest digital asset is trading at $29,581, down 0.8%, while ether is trading at $1,854, down 0.1%.

Overall the crypto market seems to have shrugged off news from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it intends to file an appeal of the ruling in its case against Ripple, which ended in a partial victory for Ripple in July.

Last month, U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York ruled that Ripple’s XRP token sales did not constitute investment contracts, though institutional sales violated federal securities laws. The ruling led to a rally in XRP, Solana’s SOL token, and other tokens that were named securities, but legal experts believe it does not fully settle the definition of a digital asset as a security under U.S. law.

Now, the SEC is seeking to appeal part of a recent decision that ruled Ripple’s programmatic sales and other distributions of XRP did not involve the offer or sale of securities under the Howey test, while a federal judge previously determined that Ripple’s direct sales to institutional investors violated securities law.

SOL is flat on the news as is Cardano (ADA) and NEAR is down 1%.

It should also be noted that the market is in a relentless period of HODLing at the moment with exchange balances at close to record lows, and the amount of bitcoin and ether that haven’t moved in 7-10 years at a record high, meaning that it’ll take a lot to move the market. More than news that the SEC is filing an appeal of a case that it might not win.

As Curve Averts DeFi Death Spiral, Fiasco Exposes Serious Risks: The worst-case consequences of last month’s Curve exchange hack seem to have been avoided, thanks to a series of side deals cut between the project’s debt-strapped founder and a handful of key crypto players. But the events still served as an indictment of the prevailing decentralized-finance, or DeFi, narrative since last year’s collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto exchange — that centralized platforms are susceptible to greed and poor risk management while decentralized platforms keep chugging along. It turns out that DeFi is susceptible too.

PayPal’s move to issue a stablecoin is putting crypto legislation back in focus in Washington, D.C. Timothy Massad, former CFTC chairman and current director of the Digital Assets Policy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School, joined the conversation. tastycrypto head Ryan Grace shared his crypto markets outlook. And, The Sandbox co-founder and COO Sebastien Borget discussed the virtual world’s latest collaboration.