The digital currency ecosystem is on rattled ground after the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Binance exchange and its CEO, Changpeng "CZ" Zhao on a 13-count charge. With the SEC crackdown, the market went on a massive bearish slide, with the cumulative liquidation figure topping $296.95 million over the past 24 hours.
Over the past day, Bitcoin (BTC) has seen a massive 3.8% slump in its price, pushing the premier asset to $25,782.71. The breaking of its key support zone at $26,000 has forced a total of $110.91 million in the coin's liquidation. Besides BTC, other assets also saw a dramatic plunge in their values.
Specifically, the SEC alleged that Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL) and Filecoin (FIL), among other top cryptocurrencies, are securities. The mention of these assets forced a major slide in their price, with Cardano dropping as much as 9% in the hours in which the lawsuit was made public.
While XRP was exempted from the new designation, Binance Coin (BNB) and metaverse tokens Decentraland (MANA) and The Sandbox (SAND) were also caught up in the mix as fears of impending individual crackdowns on these tokens swell.
Exchange liquidations and accompanying uncertainty
The lawsuit by the SEC against Binance has introduced major uncertainty into an already polarized crypto ecosystem. Almost all major exchanges in the United States list Cardano, Solana and almost all of the digital currencies the SEC designated as securities, a dilemma for these trading platforms.
As a result, total liquidations on top trading platforms also serve as a major reference point to understand what is going on in the industry. Binance is the hardest hit, with a total of $96.98 million liquidations recorded thus far.
OKX, Bybit, BitMEX and Huobi make up the top five trading platforms with the most liquidations in the past 24 hours.