Cryptocurrencies traded in the green early today. The global crypto market cap stood at $1.17 trillion, with a 2.50 percent increase over the yesterday. The total crypto market volume over the last 24 hours climbed to $65.79 billion, making a 21.45 percent decline.
The total volume in DeFi reached $6.99 billion, 10.63 percent of the total crypto market 24-hour volume. The volume of all stable coins stood at $60.45 billion, which is 91.88 percent of the total crypto market 24-hour volume.
The price of Bitcoin was Rs 18.36 lakh on Saturday morning, with a dominance of 40.03 percent. This was a 0.01 percent increase over the day, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
In international news, Huobi Group founder Leon Li is in talks with a clutch of investors to sell his majority stake in the crypto-exchange at a valuation of as much as $3 billion, in what could be the industry’s largest takeover since a $2 trillion global crypto rout began.
Tron founder Justin Sun and crypto-billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX are among those who’ve had preliminary contact with Huobi about a share transfer, sources said. They added that a deal could be completed as soon as the end of this month; and that Li is seeking a valuation of between $2-3 billion, meaning a sale could fetch upwards of $1 billion.
In India meanwhile, there is another instance of never ending trouble for crypto lending platform Vauld, with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) freezing its bank balances, payment gateway balances and crypto balances of worth Rs 370 crore for allegedly assisting predatory lending apps under ED’s investigation.
ED conducted searches at various premises of Yellow Tune Technologies at Bangalore, and the assets frozen belongs to Flipvolt Crypto-currency exchange, which runs Vauld. This comes a week after WazirX’s bank assets worth Rs. 64.67 crore were halted in the same case.
Further, geopolitically, crypto is suffering — not surging — amid an economic Cold War. After the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Washington has been flexing its financial muscles, even amid angst about the kind of blowback that overreach or alternative currencies might bring.
Right now, therefore, it looks like even a world permeated by unprecedented sanctions, conflict and inflation will fail to give crypto a big boost. But there’s one potential twist in the tale: central bank digital currencies, notably China’s e-yuan. These forms of digital money might play a big geopolitical role depending on how they’re implemented and who gets there first.
As off 8.29 am on August 13, these are the prices of largest cryptocurrencies (data from WazirX):
| NAME | PRICE (INR) | 24H % |
| Bitcoin | 18,36,798 | 2.61% |
| Ethereum | 1,47,429.8 | 3.45% |
| Tether | 75.50 | -1.29% |
| Cardano | 40 | 1.4% |
| Binance Coin | 24,450 | 1.19% |
| XRP | 28.9000 | 1.04% |
| Polkadot | 688.06 | -0.99% |
| Dogecoin | 5.3300 | 0.94% |
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