Cryptoverse: Security alert! Altcoins worth $100 billion dropped in hot water

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

A slew of altcoins — a catch-all for most cryptocurrencies except bitcoin and ether — have been harpooned in lawsuits filed by U.S. regulators against exchanges Binance and Coinbase last week, hammering the prices of the tokens. It's big. Over 50 cryptocurrencies worth over $100 billion in total and making up about 10% of the overall market, are now viewed by the SEC watchdog as securities, according to CCData. Among major players, for example, solana, polygon and cardano have sunk between 23% and 32%.

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«Security classifications would affect all U.S. crypto exchanges, leading to a forced closing of various altcoin pairs,» said Vetle Lunde, senior analyst at K33 Research. Whether U.S. courts accept the SEC's classification remains to be seen, but the impacts are already being felt — Robinhood Markets has already said it will remove solana, cardano and polygon from its platform. Market participants say other exchanges may follow suit. That would make it more expensive both for individual tokens to operate and for crypto exchanges to list them. «Securities can only be traded by brokers, and only on regulated exchanges, and only with clearing houses and transfer agents and physical certificates,» Ryan Rasmussen, analyst at Bitwise Asset Management told the Reuters Global Markets Forum. «It would certainly be a hurdle for exchanges to implement.» The SEC's classification is likely to hit investment interest