According to Fox Business journalist Eleanor Terrett, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has sent letters to several crypto exchanges asking for details on the lack of insider trading safeguards. Terrett said that the information was made available to her by "industry sources that have knowledge of the matter."
The SEC says it wants to protect investors by enacting regulations after various insider trading allegations arose in the crypto sector. The SEC had previously requested that crypto exchanges register and report financial data. Gary Gensler of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has also criticized crypto exchanges for trading against customers.
Furthermore, the SEC is looking into insider trading at big crypto companies like Binance. According to recent reports, the SEC is investigating whether Binance.US is truly independent of the global exchange and whether employees are engaging in insider trading.
The SEC is also investigating whether the crypto exchange, Binance, should have registered Binance Coin's (BNB) initial coin offering as a security, as previously reported by U.Today.
Negative sentiment pervades as outflows jump to $102 million
Negative sentiment continues to dominate crypto assets as Coinshares reported negative outflows of $102 million in the past week. Of this, Bitcoin and Ethereum had shares of $57 million and $41 million, respectively, in outflows for the past week.
The cryptocurrency market slumped on Monday, with the majority of digital assets hitting yearly lows.
Cryptocurrency market capitalization subsequently fell below $1 trillion on Monday for the first time since February 2021, recording $958 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap at press time. Bitcoin dropped sharply to reach an 18-month low of $20,816 before rebounding accordingly.
At the time of publication, Bitcoin is down 7.50% at $22,327. Ethereum also dropped to lows of $1,074 and is down 4.35% at a current price of $1,092.