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Crypto market slumps amid Tether accusations and Iran strikes.

The cryptocurrency market has seen volatility amid accusations against Tether and the escalation of the Iran-Israel conflict. The crypto market saw volatility from October 25 to 26. The market initially slumped when The Wall Street reported on an investigation into Tether (the company that operates the USDT stablecoin) for violating sanctions and anti-money laundering rules, but then quickly recovered after the company denied the news. However, crypto traders’ reaction to the news led to their major losses.

Tether is one of the fastest growing companies in the crypto market. At the end of July, Tether reported record profits – for the first half of 2024, the company earned $5.2 billion, and its consolidated capital amounted to $12 billion. The company receives its main income in the form of interest on US Treasury bonds, which are used as reserves to ensure the issuance of USDT. The USDT stablecoin is Tether’s flagship product, tied to the US dollar exchange rate. It is mainly used by traders to move digital assets between crypto exchanges, as well as in the field of consumer payments.

The confrontation between Tether and the WSJ has been going on for quite a long time. Tether has repeatedly published open refutations of the accusations and appeals to journalists on its website. In one of them, the company stated that since 2021, the publication has released more than 80 “revelatory” materials about Tether and USDT. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said there was no sign of an investigation into the company and that he had told WSJ journalists about it, accusing them of “grasping at old rumors.” Later, an appeal to The Wall Street Journal was published on the Tether website. The company’s representatives called the journalists’ publication about the investigation against it “irresponsible” and the accusations far-fetched and based on rumors and information from sources that the authors of the text do not name. The WSJ article deliberately ignores documented facts of Tether’s cooperation with law enforcement agencies and the facts of blocking the wallets of criminals, Tether noted.

At about 5:00 Hong Kong time, the Bitcoin rate again fell sharply below the $66,000 mark at the time of Israel’s strike on Iran, but quickly recovered. Bitcoin is trading at $67.1 thousand, according to data as of 15:30 Hong Kong time.

The crypto market as a whole, in percentage terms, fell even more than Bitcoin. All altcoins from the top 100 ended up in the red by 3-10% over the past 24 hours. According to the Coinglass service, which tracks transactions on major crypto exchanges, the total volume of liquidations of trading positions has exceeded $370 million over the past 24 hours. More than 130 thousand traders faced forced closure of transactions, who did not have enough funds to maintain open positions when the market went against their bets. Most of the losses were recorded by those who bet on the growth of less capitalized altcoins and Bitcoin. It is noteworthy that against the backdrop of the market decline, the rate of GOAT and MOODENG memecoins increased, which Binance added to the listing on the futures market with leverage up to 75x the day before. According to Coinglass, traders lost more than $5 million on shorts in GOAT and MOODENG alone over the past 24 hours.

Recall that the Goatseus Maximus (GOAT) token quickly became a phenomenon in the crypto community, its market cap soaring to $750 million in the two weeks of its existence, despite only being available for purchase on decentralized platforms in the Solana ecosystem. The hype around GOAT quickly spread when the story went viral that the token was the first to be promoted through artificial intelligence.

Against the backdrop of such a rather modest growth of assets, one of the legitimate and stable forms of investment for obtaining a consistently high passive income is investing in the ASTL project (Hong Kong), which gives investors the opportunity to directly invest fiat and crypto assets in a stable passive income, which obviously exceeds inflation expectations and is not subject to any sanctions, blocking or confiscation. The ASTL project is a simple and elegant solution for potential investors – investing in the development of the real sector of a diversified cryptocurrency portfolio with a fairly high annual interest rate (up to 14%) with payments in stablecoin (USDT) and the possibility of a full return on investment through the subsequent sale of accumulated ASTL tokens on leading crypto exchanges. Details can be found at https://astl.world.