Market Rally Stalls Following Latest SEC Filing Against Binance

Crypto markets started off the week in the green, but bullish momentum plateaued following the latest filing from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the agency’s ongoing legal spat with Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange.

A majority of the top 20 digital assets by market capitalization rallied between 1% and 2% in the early hours of Sept. 18. However, this surge vanished following the SEC's request for an inspection of Binance US and the agency’s subsequent call for courts to force the exchange to provide relevant documentation.

Bitcoin fell around 2% from a peak near $27,394 to $26,868, while Ether slipped 1.6% to $1,640.

Solana’s SOL has shown resilience of late, posting an 11% gain over the last seven days.

Leading tokens by seven-day gains is Toncoin, up 49%, followed by Bitcoin Cash at 19.3%, and Litecoin at 14%.

DeFi Rallies

The overall combined DeFi market capitalization gained approximately 7% in the past week, according to CoinGecko.

Half of the top-performing tokens in the sector rose over 10%. Thorchain is up 30.8%, and Aave gained 17.5%, followed by Maker and Chainlink, which rallied 15%.

Base Leads Layer 2 Throughput

Coinbase’s Base network has again become the top Layer 2 network by throughput, which is up a whopping 130% in the past week. The resurgence of social app friend.tech has been driving increased activity on Base.