On Jan. 21, Bitcoin fell nearly 5% to $39,328, its lowest level since Aug. 5, 2021.
On January 20, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on Wednesday local time that he hoped that the trading platform will take steps in the next few months to accept more direct supervision from Washington’s financial regulator.
Gensler said increased regulation is critical for cryptocurrency investors to receive the same protections as investors in stocks or other assets. The $27 billion Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is down nearly 27 percent so far in 2022, more than Bitcoin’s nearly 9 percent decline. According to the data, GBTC closed Tuesday at a record 26.5% discount to the value of its bitcoin holdings.
Data from BitPay shows that the percentage of merchants who paid with bitcoin last year dropped to around 65% from 92% in 2020. In addition, ether payments accounted for 15% of total purchases, stablecoins accounted for 13%, and BitPay’s newly added cryptocurrencies in 2021 – Dogecoin, Shiba Inu and Litecoin – accounted for 3%.
Consumers and businesses are increasingly starting to use digital tokens other than bitcoin to make purchases.
BitPay