The cryptocurrency market state in February is far different than the previous month. After going through a profitable month-long rush in January, the market has since retracted, and the leading assets, bitcoin, and Ethereum lost their major resistance lines acquired during that month.
Today, February 13, Ethereum fell from the $1,500 margin, trading at $1,487 at this time of writing. Loosing that major key zone means that Ethereum reached its lowest price since mid-December.
The most recent move by the United States Government has caused a great deal of uncertainty in the cryptocurrency market. Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission went after the crypto exchange Kraken, over their staking-as-a-service feature.
This caused a lot of concern for assets that are based on a Proof-of-Stake consensus. Today the largest cryptocurrency under that mechanism is in fact, Ethereum.
Since that, Ethereum entered a strong downward movement. Over the previous seven days, Ethereum lost about 200 dollars in its token price, meaning that the asset went through a 12% depreciation in that timeframe.
To put it in comparison, bitcoin lost about 6% in that same period. This indicates that assets under the “staking” consensus mechanism are currently facing a lot of market uncertainty over the next steps by the SEC.
Ethereum Co-Founder Talks About The SEC
Recently, the co-founder of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Joseph Lubin, spoke about the recent SEC movements.
Since merging into a staking mechanism, Ethereum has been in the cross-eye of the SEC.
The commission believes that the staking consensus mechanism should be classified as a security. The argument is that, under this system, investors receive a monetary reward for holding and staking a digital asset, much like stock investors would gain dividends from companies.
In an interview with CoinDesk, Lubin spoke about the recent SEC movements and defended his argument that staking assets should not be classified as securities.
Lubin said that he believes that the likelihood of Eth being classified as security is extremely unlikely. He also claimed that if that were to happen, there would be a “tremendous outcry” from not only the cryptocurrency community but from congressmen and other politicians as well.
