Bitcoin Falls Below $6,600 As Investors Ponder Significance of SEC’s Postponement of VanEck Bitcoin ETF Decision

The U.S. SEC’s postponement of its decision on the VanEck-SolidX Bitcoin ETF to 30 September 2018, as covered here yesterday, has left the crypto markets bruised but not battered, with Bitcoin suffering a drop to below $6,600, with almost all other top 50 cryptocurrencies currently in the red.

Although the SEC’s decision to take more time by extending the deadline to 30 September 2018 did not shock, it certainly did disappoint. And the realization that the SEC was allowed to extend this deadline twice more (i.e. the first time to 29 December 2018 and the second time to 27 February 2019) did not help matters.

On Wednesday (8 August 2018), according to data from CryptoCompare, Bitcoin fell to as low as $6,425 (at 05:30 UTC), the lowest it has been since 16 July 2018; at press time, BTC has recovered slightly, trading around $6,515 for a loss of 7.27% in the past 24-hour period:

As usual, when Bitcoin sneezes, the rest of the cryptocurrencies catch a cold. Here are a few examples:

• Ether (ETH) at $369.12, down 9.6%
• XRP at $0.3471, down 15.71%
• Ethereum Classic (ETC) at $15.81, down 14.83%
• EOS at $5.97, down 15.20%

Currently, the total crypto market cap stands around $232 billion, with Bitcoin Dominance at 48.15%.

On Twitter, CNBC’s Crypto Trader, Ran NeuNer, had this to say about the crypto markets’ reaction to the SEC news:

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