Elon Musk announced on Thursday that Tesla stopped selling vehicles with Bitcoin in the morning. Bitcoin fell to $ 46,000 on Coinbase following this announcement, which has not been seen since March.
A direct causal relationship was established between Musk's announcement and the drop in price. Headlines were made in the local press such as "Musk shook the crypto money markets", "Crypto coins turned upside down with a single tweet by Elon Musk".
Saying that prices are not going down because of Musk would be a difficult position to maintain. But in the light of retrospective reviews, we propose the following claim: It is not possible to explain what happened on Thursday with Musk alone.
Glassnode analyst William Clemente studied what was happening in the markets before Elon Musk tweeted.
Since the beginning of this week, less than 10,000 or even 5,000 Bitcoins were sent to crypto exchanges most hours of the day.
It was found that 19,259 Bitcoins were sent to exchanges before Musk tweeted and prices went down.
Clemente commented on this painting: “I don't think it was a coincidence. Probably an insider knew about the situation. Sent to exchanges before posting; It is very interesting that after tweeting, the amount of (coins) coming out of exchanges increases. This data reinforces the claim that an insider is knowledgeable. Otherwise, it would be a very big coincidence. "
At the time of the decline, significant movements were also observed in the options market.
According to CoinDesk's report, Fredrick Collins of Glassnode team saw market makers on the option side start selling cryptocurrencies for hedging purposes on Thursday.
Market makers, whose Short gamma focused on the $ 50,000-52,000 range, were reported to have sold around 2,900 Bitcoins to offset the gamma effect when the Bitcoin price went down.
Collins said this might "have consolidated" the Thursday's drop.
Increasing gamma makes option hedging more difficult and costly. So much so that one of the biggest fears of market makers is being exposed to too much gamma. A market maker who has too much exposure to negative gamma can lose large amounts of money. ”
IRS can seize citizens' cryptocurrency
A creditor in Istanbul applied to the 14th Executive Office to receive a total of 60,000 lira debt together with the expenses and requested a lien on the money the debtor held in a crypto currency exchange in Turkey. The court decided to impose a lien on cryptocurrencies held in this account on March 5 and the debtor's account was blocked.
The US Tax Administration (IRS) announced this week that similar decisions could be implemented in the US. Robert Wearing, acting deputy chief advisor to the IRS, announced on Wednesday that citizens who do not pay their taxes can seize their cryptocurrencies.
The IRS announced in 2014 that cryptocurrencies were classified as property, not currency. Accordingly, cryptocurrencies seized due to tax debt can be put on sale for debt.
Reporting requirement to stock exchanges in Argentina
Argentina's tax office (AFIF) will start collecting monthly reports from cryptocurrency exchanges in the country. The reports will include transactions made by stock exchange customers.
According to the news of local news outlet Bae Negocios, data regarding the customers' account and identity information and account balances will be reported. It is stated that each monthly report must be submitted by the 15th of the next month at the latest.
Oil giant may have paid ransom with crypto money
Colonial, the largest oil pipeline company in the US, paid a ransom of $ 5 million in cryptocurrency to Eastern European hackers.
The Colonial Pipeline pipeline carries more than 100 million gallons of gasoline and other different fuel per day from Houston to New York Port. The pipeline's operations were halted on May 7 due to a cyberattack.
According to Bloomberg's report, the oil giant paid a ransom of $ 5 million in cryptocurrencies "hard to follow" in order to reopen the line. It was stated that while the pipeline restarts at 17:00 local time on Wednesday, it may take a few days for activities to return to normal.
US President Joe Biden announced on May 13 that the pipeline started to reach "full capacity". Biden, who did not include crypto money in his statement, said, “We do not believe that the Russian government had a share in the attack. But we have strong grounds that the criminals who carried out the attack lived in Russia. " said.
What did Binance say about the investigation news in the US?
Bloomberg stated that the US Department of Justice and the Tax Office launched an investigation against Binance on Thursday evening.
It is stated that the investigations are mostly carried out in the context of "combating money laundering" and "tax crimes".
The headline "Binance Is Being Investigated by Money Laundering and Tax Crime Hunters in the USA" in the news caused anxiety throughout the industry. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said the headline was "bad" and that Binance's work so far was "poorly reflected".
Although it is not possible to predict how such investigations will result, it is known that an irregularity or violation of the law is not detected at the end of each examination, and no accusations are made against every institution that has been examined. The statement of Binance officials was as follows:
“We take our legal obligations very seriously and show a cooperative attitude in our communication with regulators and law enforcement. We have worked hard to establish a robust regulatory compliance program that includes the tools financial institutions use to detect suspicious transactions as part of the fight against money laundering. So far we have shown that we assist different law enforcement agencies around the world, including those in the United States. "