The price of Bitcoin has started trading below its 200-day trendline for the first time in over 10 months after an overnight price drop saw the price of the flagship cryptocurrency drop below the $60,000 mark.

Consensys, the company behind the popular crypto wallet MetaMask, has announced the acquisition of Wallet Guard, a security tool designed to safeguard digital assets and user data from theft, scams, and fraud.

Russia's central bank, facing mounting economic pressure from Western sanctions, has signaled a shift in its stance on cryptocurrencies, telling businesses they should use “multiple choice solutions” including crypto to facilitate payments with foreign partners.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Bitcoin Drops Below 200-Day Moving Average Triggering ETF Liquidation Concerns
• MetaMask Enhances Security with Acquisition of Wallet Guard
• Russia's Central Bank Eases Crypto Stance Amid Sanctions Pressure

Bitcoin Drops Below 200-Day Moving Average Triggering ETF Liquidation Concerns

The price of Bitcoin has started trading below its 200-day trendline for the first time in over 10 months after an overnight price drop saw the price of the flagship cryptocurrency drop below the $60,000 mark.

According to popular analyst Skew, the price dropping below the 200-day moving average is a result of spot selling, which has been the “main driver of this trend,” and in order for the high-time frame moving average to “actually act as a systematic trigger for the market we need to see market demand & reversal signs.”

The 200-day moving average is around $58,400, below the critical $60,000 that Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, estimated to be the average Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) entry price, meaning that “re-testing this level could result in a wave of liquidations.”

These spot ETFs, as CoinDesk reports, have seen over $14 billion in net inflows since their debut, and per Thielen 30% of these flows are part of a so-called basis trade, which exploits price differences between spot and futures markets in what’s known as a cash-and-carry trade.

Bitcoin’s drop below the $60,000 mark in late April bottomed out at the time BlackRock suggested there was growing institutional interest in spot Bitcoin ETFs from sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and endowments.

However, recent data from JPMorgan shows that a majority (80%) of inflows into these ETFs originated from existing cryptocurrency market participants, rather than new institutional entrants.

MetaMask Enhances Security with Acquisition of Wallet Guard

Consensys, the company behind the popular crypto wallet MetaMask, has announced the acquisition of Wallet Guard, a security tool designed to safeguard digital assets and user data from theft, scams, and fraud.

The acquisition paves the way for the integration of Wallet Guard's security features into MetaMask in a bid to improve users’ protections within Web3. Wallet Guard's expertise in transaction validation and client-side threat detection is expected to equip MetaMask users with enhanced capabilities to identify and avoid scams and malicious actors.

The integration will see the Wallet Guard team join Conensys and work within the MetaMask Product Safety Team to ensure a seamless transition. Patrick Berarducci, Consensys’ MetaMask and Infura Business Group lead, said the effort will provide users “advanced phishing detection, web scrapers, and blocklist and transaction analysis APIs that allow for an advanced scam detection.”

The acquisition comes after a Chainalysis report on crypto crime revealed that scammers pilfered over $1.7 billion in crypto assets in 2023.

It’s worth noting that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently sued Consensys alleging it operated as an unregistered broker and collected over $250 million in fees without being registered with the regulator.

Russia's Central Bank Eases Crypto Stance Amid Sanctions Pressure

Russia's central bank, facing mounting economic pressure from Western sanctions, has signaled a shift in its stance on cryptocurrencies, telling businesses they should use “multiple choice solutions” including crypto to facilitate payments with foreign partners.

In a speech at a financial conference in St. Petersburg, Governor Elvira Nabiullina acknowledged the significant challenges posed by sanctions on Russian financial institutions and on Russia’s domestic alternative to the SWIFT international payments system.

To navigate these hurdles, Nabiullina announced a more lenient approach towards cryptocurrencies saying new financial technology “creates opportunities for schemes which did not exist before” and as a result the central bank is softening its stance “on the use of cryptocurrencies in international payments.”.

This move reflects Russia's need for alternative payment methods to sustain trade with countries like China, India, and Turkey, which haven't imposed sanctions, and after trade with these partners suffered major setbacks after Western sanctions targeted major Russian financial institutions.

Nabiullina recognized the resourcefulness of Russian businesses in finding alternative solutions and said that Russian business partners in various countries are under “tremendous pressure,” adding a new global payments system not involving Western institutions would emerge as many countries felt vulnerable relying on the existing system.

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