The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has used its insider-trading case against a former Coinbase product manager to formally declare nine digital assets as “securities” in its ongoing practice of defining its crypto oversight through enforcement actions.

The year's second quarter was marred by high-profile contagion events within the digital assets ecosystem. Bitcoin and Ethereum lost 56.3% and 67.4% of their value, respectively, and the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols plunged 65.7% to $93.2 billion.

Cryptocurrency market maker Cumberland has said institutional investors have been increasing their bets on Ethereum’s ether during the cryptocurrency’s rally this week.

CryptoCompare is delighted to announce the launch of its enhanced digital asset order book data product, providing users with unparalleled insight into the digital asset markets. Readers can generate an exclusive API key that allows them to trial the data for a limited time here.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• SEC Calls 9 Cryptos ‘Securities’
• Total Value Locked on DeFi Keeps Dropping
• Institutions Long Ether as Ethereum’s Merge Approaches
• Crypto Market Movers – BOND, MATIC, CRV
• CryptoCompare Launches Enhanced Order Book Data Product

SEC Calls 9 Cryptos ‘Securities’

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has used its insider-trading case against a former Coinbase product manager to formally declare nine digital assets as “securities” in its ongoing practice of defining its crypto oversight through enforcement actions.

The regulator filed a complaint on Thursday alleging the former Coinbase product manager gave his brother and friend tips on which assets the exchange planned to list in the near future.

While the SEC has identified cryptocurrencies as securities before, it did so in enforcement actions or settlements with the issuer. Its recent complaint marks the first time the SEC has identified several cryptocurrencies as securities, without charging the issuers or the exchange for listing these assets.

The tokens the SEC identified as securities were Flexa’s AMP, RLY, DDX, XYO, RGT, LCX, POWR, DFX and KROM. The SEC’s 62-page complaint went through each of these assets to illustrate how each should be defined under the Howey Test as a security.

Total Value Locked on DeFi Keeps Dropping

The year's second quarter was marred by high-profile contagion events within the digital assets ecosystem. While Bitcoin and Ethereum lost 56.3% and 67.4% of their value respectively, the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols plunged 65.7% to $93.2 billion.

Platforms such as Aave, MakerDAO and Curve Finance have played important roles in the crunch of the digital asset space, but managed to function as normal with little to no operational downtime.

A poor macroeconomic environment combined with the possibility of a multi-year-long bear market has made it difficult for decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols to sustain themselves, particularly if they haven’t shown prudent treasury management.

Aave, DeFi’s flagbearer, has seen its treasury value plunge from around $532 million to $102 million in the year's first half. With all signs pointing to a more sustained period of pain for the DeFi sector, total value locked may remain range bound as crypto prices attempt to recover.

Read CryptoCompare’s 2022 Q3 Outlook to learn more about developments in DeFi, the digital assets space, and macroeconomic factors affecting it.

Institutions Long Ether as Ethereum’s Merge Approaches

Cryptocurrency market maker Cumberland has said institutional investors have been increasing their bets on Ethereum’s ether during the cryptocurrency’s rally this week.

The Chicago-based firm revealed that despite a slight pullback, the up-trend was intact and technicals aren’t being driven by macro-related issues for Ethereum. The firm wrote:

“This move has been crypto-fundamental: the Sepolia testnet successfully merged to proof-of-stake on July 6th, setting the stage for an early-autumn mainnet merge.”

The mainnet merge refers to Ethereum’s move from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake, which was recently projected to take place in September. Cumberland noted it has been seeing increased flows through its over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk as all ratios tilted long over the past week. The buyers, it said, were institutions.

Crypto Market Movers – BOND, MATIC, CRV

Several tokens are leading the charge in the last 7-day period. Some of these are well-known cryptocurrencies with more liquid trading pairs, so we’ll be focusing on these over low-cap cryptos that may have higher percentage changes.

BarnBridge (BOND) - BarnBridge is a risk tokenizing protocol. It allows hedging yield sensitivity and price volatility. BarnBridge does this by accessing debt pools on other DeFi protocols, and transforming single pools into multiple assets with varying risk/return characteristics.

Polygon (MATIC) - Polygon (MATIC) is a Layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum that providers users with faster transactions and lower costs as a parallel blockchain running alongside the main Ethereum network.

Curve (CRV) - Curve allows users (and smart contracts like 1inch, Paraswap, Totle and Dex.ag) to trade with a bespoke low slippage, low fee algorithm designed specifically for stablecoins and earn fees. Behind the scenes, the liquidity pool is also supplied to the Compound protocol or others where it generates even more income for liquidity providers.

CryptoCompare Launches Enhanced Order Book Data Product

CryptoCompare is delighted to announce the launch of its enhanced digital asset order book data product, providing users with unparalleled insight into the digital asset markets. Readers can generate an exclusive API key that allows them to trial the data for a limited time here.

An order book is a ledger that includes all buy and sell orders for a specific cryptocurrency on a centralised exchange. CryptoCompare captures this trade data from integrated exchange order books to provide users with highly accurate and granular liquidity data, with over 99% data coverage. 

Key features:

• Maximum depth captured for both bid and ask to produce the most complete order book data available.

• Smart snapshots are constructed at minute granularity for consolidated analysis of different exchanges.

• Standardised mapping and post-processing reduces lead times and removes negative spreads.

• Historical L2 order book data is stored for all exchanges.

• Bespoke data-delivery methods including AWS S3, Azure Blobs, Google and Big Query.

Unlike other data providers, CryptoCompare captures every current unattributed open order on the book at the highest available frequency to provide the most granular historical order book data on the market. Data sets are standardised in real-time, and ready-built for in-depth research and analysis. 
Find out more about the new order book product here.

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