Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin Tumble After Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao Resigns, Pleads Guilty To Felony Charge: Analyst Warns Apex Crypto Could Crash Over 40%

Major cryptocurrencies experienced a downturn on Tuesday evening following a significant development involving Binance. 

What Happened: The Department of Justice (DOJ), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and U.S. Treasury jointly unveiled a substantial $4.3-billion settlement with Binance.

In addition, the former CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, will reportedly plead guilty to one felony charge as part of the settlement agreement, which aims to address both criminal and civil cases related to the cryptocurrency exchange.

"Moving forward, Binance must file the suspicious activity reports that were required by law. The company is required to review past transactions and report suspicious activity to federal authorities. This will advance our criminal investigations into malicious cyber activity and terrorism fundraising, including the use of cryptocurrency exchanges to support groups such as Hamas," said United States Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Despite the troubling news surrounding Binance, users of the exchange, as well as centralized exchanges in general, are not hastily abandoning the platform. According to Glassnode, the net change in Bitcoin positions on Binance is significantly lower than the numbers observed in January and July.

Following CZ’s resignation, Binance appointed Richard Teng as the new CEO on November 21. In doing so, the exchange reaffirms the sentiments of the crypto community regarding the way forward.

Top Gainer (24 Hour)

The global crypto market cap currently stands at $1.41 trillion, reflecting a decrease of 0.19% in the past 24 hours.

Stocks took a downward turn on Tuesday as traders analyzed the recent Federal Reserve meeting minutes, which provided no indication of potential interest rate cuts.

The S&P 500 also experienced a slight dip of 0.20%, ending the day at 4,538.19. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite fell by 0.59% to reach 14,199.98. 

The Federal Reserve conveyed its belief that policy needs to remain on the “restrictive” side in light of concerns surrounding potential stubborn inflation or higher ticks. At the conclusion of their Oct. 31-Nov. 1 meeting, policymakers decided to leave the benchmark rate unchanged at 5.25% to 5.5%.

"In discussing the policy outlook, participants continued to judge that it was critical that the stance of monetary policy be kept sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to the Committee's 2 percent objective over time," the minutes stated.

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Analyst Notes: Cryptocurrency analyst Michael Van de Poppe said market corrections are an integral part of the cycle. "Crypto markets are ~1 Trillion, today. In two years time, it will be tenfold and you’d be happy if you were accumulating at these levels."

https://twitter.com/CryptoMichNL/status/1726582412963135512

Pseudonymous crypto analyst Rekt Capital predicts that Bitcoin may mirror its 2016 price pattern. According to the analyst, there could be a significant decline of 40% following a pre-halving rally.

"Bitcoin could potentially see a retrace around a halving event of up to 40%. We're going to be focusing specifically on this [2016] pre-halving retrace period. This is where Bitcoin was consolidating for a substantial amount of time in preparation for this light blue pre-halving rally to new yearly highs and then after we formed those new yearly highs, Bitcoin actually retraced the minus 40%."

Santiment, a firm specializing in on-chain data analytics for the crypto market, has made an interesting observation. While many attribute the recent major market retracement to the Binance news, the truth is that altcoins had already been experiencing a decline in market caps. What’s noteworthy is that some traders seem to be exchanging their BNB for FTX's FTT.”

Photo by Igor Faun on Shutterstock

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