News in brief

• Stocks in the United States mostly fell ahead of the expected rise in US interest rates, with only technology titles managing to recover from losses. The U.S. central bank’s monetary policy committee is expected to announce an interest rate hike at the end of its two-day meeting on Wednesday. Initial estimates were for a half-percentage-point rate hike, but speculation is growing that rates could rise by as much as 0.75 percentage points after the May inflation data was announced.

• Bitcoin kept plunging in the past 24 hours to a new multi-year low of under $21,000.
• Most of the altcoins followed suit with massive price losses.
• ETH is among the leaders in this adverse trend as it dipped below $1,100.

Bitcoin (BTC) is now trading at $21,514 down by 6,3% in 24 hours

Ethereum (ETH) is now trading at $1,169 down by 4.7% in 24 hours

PlatonCoin (PLTC) is now trading at $1.12 down by 0,5% in 24 hours

Total market capitalization is now $0.957 trillion, down by 6.7% in 24 hours

(all data valid at the time of publishing, from Coingecko.com)

Crypto news

Ethereum whales buy the dip: Ethereum’s much-anticipated Merge is finally close to fruition and that is sending ripples across the layer-1 network with investors now buying the ETH dip in hoards to avoid missing the train. According to data by IntoTheBlock, despite ETH’s transaction volume being on a downtrend in the past two or so months, retail accumulation has been on the rise with addresses holding between 0.01-0.1 ETH increasing their balance by 3.35% over the past 30 days.

Fed and crypto winter: “What has pushed Bitcoin into a ‘crypto winter’ over the last six months can by and large be explained as a direct result of an increasingly hawkish rhetoric from the US Federal Reserve. Institutional investors offloaded $101.5 million worth of digital asset products last week in “anticipation of hawkish monetary policy” from the United States Federal Reserve, according to CoinShares.

SEC and crypo exchanges: Fox Business journalist Eleanor Terrett revealed in a June 14 tweet that the SEC has sent letters to a number of crypto exchanges, requesting details regarding the absence of insider trading protections. Terrett said the information was disclosed to her by industry sources familiar with the matter. The regulator claims its focus is on protecting investors by enforcing more laws following the eruption of insider trading cases within the cryptocurrency industry. Moreover, the watchdog is investigating major crypto firms, including Binance and Terraform Labs for possible breaches of securities laws.

Would you like to gain a better understanding of the world of cryptocurrencies? Try our series of educational articles for newbies. Did you find a term in the text that you don’t understand? You can find all the most commonly used terms in our glossary.