Coinbase argues the definition is vague, and urges the CFTC to make determinations on a contract-by-contract basis rather than broad categorization

On July 8th, Binance Research's latest report showed that the crypto market experienced a significant downward trend in June 2024, with an overall decline of up to 11.4%. Due to the market downturn, the TVL (total locked value) of DeFi decreased by 8.7% in June. The NFT market also continued to be sluggish, with a total sales volume of $46 million in June, a decrease of 26.2% compared to May. The monthly sales volume of DMarket, the in-game item trading platform for Mythos, was the highest at $18.9 million, followed closely by CryptoPunks with sales of $16.1 million. The sales of top-tier ordinal series such as BitcoinPuppets and NodeMonkes decreased significantly, by 40.6% and 41.0%, respectively. BoredApeYachtClub's monthly sales volume slightly decreased, while PudgyPenguins performed better than the market, rising by 68.9%.

Paul Grewal.eth, the Chief Legal Officer of Coinbase, wrote on the X platform that the issues of Chevron and Binance's secondary sales have been clarified, but in Coinbase's lawsuit, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has prevented Coinbase from requesting the disclosure of Gary Gensler's communication documents. In March 2021, Gary Gensler told the U.S. Congress that the SEC lacked regulatory authority over digital asset exchanges, confirming the long-held belief among market participants that digital asset trading on these exchanges is not within the jurisdiction of securities law. Coinbase has requested that Gary Gensler provide documents related to these communications because they are related to how the SEC's enforcement actions violate the due process requirements of the Constitution, but the SEC and Gary Gensler are trying to prevent the disclosure of these documents.

CryptoQuant disclosed on X platform that the listing of Bitcoin spot ETF caused the Bitcoin reserves of Coinbase exchange to rapidly decline since February. Data shows that on February 18, 2024, Coinbase's Bitcoin reserves were about 1,044,997 BTC, but now this indicator has decreased to 878,000 BTC, a decrease of about 167,000 BTC.

According to the latest data from Cryptoslam, the sales of NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain in January reached about $356 million, a decrease of about $7 million from December, a decrease of about 2%. In addition, the transaction volume of NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain in January reached 929,000 transactions.

According to Cryptoslam data, as reported by Jinse Finance, the Bitcoin blockchain NFT sales in January 2024 exceeded $335 million, with a trading volume of nearly 250,000 transactions, including over 67,000 independent sellers and approximately 78,000 independent buyers. Historical data shows that January 2024 is the third-highest single-month record on the Bitcoin blockchain to date, surpassed only by the highest record of approximately $869 million set in December 2023 and the second-highest record of approximately $376 million in November 2023.

According to a report by CoinGecko, NFT transaction volume in 2023 will be less than half of that in 2022, dropping from $26.3 billion to $11.8 billion, a decrease of $14.5 billion. The dashboard of Dune Analytics shows that the transaction volume of OpenSea, the leader in the NFT market, exceeded $2 billion for 9 consecutive months between 2021 and 2022, but shrank to about $170 million in December 2023. Rohan Handa, the NFT director of Mysten Labs, said that the decline in the field was caused by poor macroeconomic conditions and notable collapses, which weakened the public and investors' confidence in the unstable crypto industry.

While Coinbase aims to compete in the EU derivatives market, it faces stiff competition from more prominent players like Binance, Bybit, OKX and Deribit.

According to CryptoSlam data, the Bitcoin blockchain's NFT sales in December 2023 reached a record high of $881,223,753.92, with 111,713 buyer addresses and 98,744 seller addresses, both setting new monthly records. As of now, the total NFT sales on the Bitcoin blockchain have reached $1.83 billion, making it the fourth largest blockchain for NFT sales, behind only Ethereum ($42.12 billion), Solana ($4.62 billion), and Ronin ($4.25 billion).

The SEC rejected Coinbase's petition for crypto rulemaking, marking yet another refusal to provide regulatory clarity for an industry that badly wants it.