Bitcoin, SBF, ether and SEC Chair Gensler all came up at the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night. Pro-crypto candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said U.S. regulation needs to catch up to prevent episodes like FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried defrauding customers and Binance breaking sanctions laws. Ramaswamy announced a plan to drastically reduce the SEC workforce and relax regulations on the crypto industry, advocating for most cryptocurrencies to be treated as commodities outside the SEC's jurisdiction. "It's nothing short of embarrassing that Gary Gensler, the SEC chair, couldn't even confirm in front of Congress whether Ethereum is a regulated security," Ramaswamy said. "This is another example of the administrative state going too far."

Vivek Ramaswamy (Credit: Frederick Munawa)

Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko said the blockchain platform's much-hyped Saga phone has an uncertain future following disappointing sales since it went on sale in April this year. “We have to decide if there’s a place for a smart wallet, a much cheaper version that an iPhone user could use as a secondary device," he said during a podcast appearance. Yakovenko noted that advancements in mobile interfaces have significantly reduced the gap between specialized and regular smartphones. He added that he doesn't use his own Saga as his primary phone, instead using it as his "NFT phone."

More than 1,000 BTC mined during the early stages of bitcoin's history moved to trading desks and custodian services earlier this week, an instance of "Satoshi era" bitcoin being transferred. The coins last moved 13 years ago and were mined from block rewards at an estimated total cost of $100. They now have a market value of over $40 million. There were also instances of "Satoshi era" (the period when Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto was active in the community between 2009 and 2011) bitcoin being moved in recent months. In July a wallet that had been dormant for 11 years sent $30 million worth of BTC to other wallets. Long-time dormant BTC becoming active is seen by some as a sign of stirring optimism about growing bitcoin adoption.

A message from Bitget

Pullbacks have been absent from bitcoin's recent surge, instead being formed by a stepwise structure of consecutive rallies and horizontal consolidation runs. This is in contrast to previous rallies, including that of late 2020-early 2021, where pullbacks of at least 20% were common.

These have not occurred in the current rally, which commenced in late October and has seen BTC climb over 40% to break above $40,000 for the first time since April 2022.This is a sign of the rally being primarily spot-driven, options data tracker Greeks.Live said in a post on X.

"With all major derivatives data relatively flat, futures premiums holding around 10%, and options IVs implied volatility not showing significant gains," Greek.Live said. "We have to put this rally and the news of the impending passage of the ETF in perspective; this spot bull market is very healthy, the downside is limited, and the bull market is here to stay."

Data tracked by analytics firm CryptoQuant show bitcoin's spot-to-derivatives trading volume ratio jumped to nearly 0.10 from 0.05 last month, indicating increased activity in the spot market.

- Omkar Godbole