Major cryptocurrencies ticked upwards on Thursday after Ripple Labs Inc. was ordered to pay a $125 million penalty — an outcome the firm framed as a victory over the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Bitcoin rose as much as 4.5% to over $57,600 while Ether, the second-largest token, was at one point up almost 5%. Both tokens are still well below their level a week ago, following a decline on Monday that was the market’s steepest since the days of FTX in 2022.
That came as a global stocks selloff intensified, reflecting concerns about the economic outlook and rising tensions in the Middle East, as well as fears that heavy bets on artificial intelligence may fail to bear fruit.
Markets remain “pretty nervous after the events that took place earlier this week,” said Benjamin Celermajer, co-chief investment officer at Magnet Capital. “If confidence grows that the concern was overblown, I believe many will view markets to have sold off too hard,” he added.
Cryptocurrencies intially clawed back some of those losses on Tuesday but that bounceback quickly petered out. Bitcoin was trading at $57,449 and Ether at $2,457 at 11:03 a.m. in Singapore on Thursday.
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Ripple to pay a civil penalty of $125 million, a fraction of the almost $2 billion the SEC had sought. The regulator sued Ripple in 2020, accusing the company of raising money by selling the XRP token without registering it as a security. XRP rose as much as 25% after the ruling.
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