Tuesday morning trading in Asia saw Bitcoin fall below US$20,000 as most other cryptocurrencies in the top ten by market value, excluding stablecoins, lost ground, including Ether. One of the few coins, Polygon, overtook Solana in terms of market cap. Losers were led by Solana.
In the last 24 hours, Bitcoin lost 2.6% of its value, trading at $19,488. According to data from CoinMarketCap, while Ether fell 0.4% to US$1,444.
Following the news that social media giant Instagram was integrating NFTs on its platform utilizing the Polygon network, Polygon’s price maintained its upward trend, climbing 9.6% to US$1.25 and posting gains of 37.9% over the past seven days.
The only other token to experience growth was Polkadot, which increased 4.4% to US$7.12 after the company revealed that the US Securities and Exchange Commission had determined that its native token, DOT, is software, not a security.
Because of rumors that Sam Bankman-cryptocurrency Fried’s exchange FTX Trading Ltd. and his trading company Alameda Research are involved in a scandal, Solana dropped 9.8% to US$29.57.
There have been rumors that Alameda may try to sell its holdings in Solana to increase liquidity and that rival crypto exchange Binance Global Inc. may try to sell significant amounts of FTX’s native currency, FTT. On Monday, Bankman-Fried tweeted, “A competitor is trying to go after us with false rumors. FTX is fine. Assets are fine.”
