Cryptos fall; Bitcoin starts August below $29,000

For Callie Cox, analyst at eToro, the latest moves reflect that seasonality is taking its toll on the big cryptoassets. "The seasonal patterns we see show that Bitcoin prices have been a little bit weaker in August and September. People are going off to the beach; they're not looking at their portfolios or trading their portfolios," the expert explained in an interview granted to 'CoinDesk TV'.

Be that as it may, the fact is that Bitcoin has just closed one of the worst months of the year. In July, the reigning cryptocurrency dropped 4% after receiving several boosts in June that augured a good month for the world's largest digital asset, which has historically performed well in the seventh month of the year.

However, the lack of news on Bitcoin spot ETFs from Binance and other traditional finance giants and the overvaluation triggered by Ripple's partial victory before the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has ended up turning against cryptos.

The highlight in recent days has been the security breach experienced by the Curve (CRV) token, linked to the Curve Finance cryptocurrency exchange. The cryptocurrency was the victim of an exploit in its programming language that diverted around $70 million from users. Following this incident, the value of the crypto dropped drastically and has plummeted by 20%.

Part of the reason the market is reacting in this way is due to a lending position held by founder Michael Egorov in the Aave lending protocol. Egorov currently has a $168 million loan position in Aave guaranteed by CRV, which is about to be liquidated. If it were to liquidate, the rapid fall in prices would trigger a series of cascading liquidations, with liquidated assets flooding the market. The total value of assets locked up in Curve fell to $2.1 billion from $3.7 billion as many investors withdrew funds out of caution.

On the other hand, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong acknowledged in an interview with the British newspaper 'Financial Times' that the SEC urged them to stop trading all cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin before filing the lawsuit against the exchange.

"They came back to us and said.... we believe that all assets other than Bitcoin are securities. And we asked them how they came to that conclusion, because that's not our interpretation of the law. And they told us that we weren't going to explain it to them, that they had to de-list all assets other than Bitcoin. Somehow it made it an easy choice...let's go to court and find out what they say," explained the CEO of the listed crypto exchange.

In other market news, there are falls among the main altcoins. Binance coin (BNB) stands out on the positive side rising 0.4%, while Ripple (XRP), Cardano (ADA) and Dogecoin (DOGE) drop more than 2%.