Bitcoin Stays Buoyant Amid Crypto And Banking Crisis

Bitcoin, the world's first-ever cryptocurrency and the world's largest crypto asset by market capitalization, remained afloat despite the crisis in crypto and banking industries and even after regulatory tension arose when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a lawsuit against Binance, one of the largest centralized crypto exchange platforms in the world.

Bitcoin's price immediately plummeted 3.6% and traded down at $26,900 after Binance and its CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao were sued by the CFTC on Monday for allegedly breaking trading regulations.

The crypto exchange platform is currently under investigation by several U.S. financial regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), federal prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Aside from that, U.S. federal judge Jennifer Rearden of the U.S. District Court in New York is now temporarily putting on hold the proposed sale of assets of the bankrupt brokerage company Voyager Digital to Binance US and granted the request for an emergency stay.

Despite all these, it looks like the maiden crypto continues to stay afloat as evidenced by the performance of Bitcoin features premium, which suggested the lawsuit against Binance has no significant impact.

While the two-month contract premium is at 3.5%, which is below the neutral 5% threshold, it showed that panic selling among holders did not happen, which could have swiftly sunk to zero or even negative if such took place.

Also, following the slide in price, Bitcoin traded flat and saw a 1.6% gain in the last 24 hours and was trading at $27,302 on Tuesday, which intrigued industry watchers and investors, considering that the Federal Reserve recently announced a 25 Bps interest rate increase.

How and why Bitcoin is managing to stay buoyant in this harsh environment is a mystery to many.

Human RightsFoundation chief strategy officer Alex Gladstein said that this could be because the maiden crypto is vindicating a thesis. "I would say it vindicates a thesis," he said, adding that "Web3, blockchain, all these buzzwords over the years... and yet bitcoin just continues to grow and it continues to help people."

Data scientist Bennet Tomlin, who also hosts a podcast, Crypto Critics Corner, explained that "the frame I generally put around it is: Bitcoin is an internet currency maintained by a network of computers, which is best suited for payments that the government or society would want to stop."

As of 4:08 a.m. ET on Wednesday, Bitcoin saw a 4.11% gain over the past 24 hours and was trading up $28,081.47 with a 24-hour volume of $19,551,167,194, according to the latest data from CoinMarketCap.