Biggest crypto stories this past week: Blur airdrop and more SEC action

This week saw another significant piece of enforcement action by U.S. regulators as the Securities and Exchange Commission went after Paxos for issuing BUSD stablecoin.

In other news, NFT marketplace Blur debuted its token with an airdrop for users.

Bitcoin temporarily touched the $25,000 mark for the first time in six months as the total crypto market capitalization rallied toward $1.2 trillion.

Here are some of the major highlights from this week in the crypto space:

SEC calls BUSD a security

The week began with Paxos halting its issuance of BUSD. This came amid a lawsuit by the SEC stating that BUSD is a security. This announcement triggered a 6% drop in the Binance token price as stablecoin users exited BUSD in favor of others like Tether. Such was the extent of stablecoin swaps that BUSD redemptions reached $684 million in less than 24 hours.

Binance, for its part, has said it will stick with BUSD for now but is exploring other options. Later in the week, on-chain data showed Binance minting $50 million worth of TrueUSD stablecoin. This caused the price of TrueFi, the DeFi protocol that issues the stablecoin, to surge more than 140% in a short space of time.

Blur airdrops its tokens, challenges OpenSea

NFT marketplace Blur introduced its token this week with an airdrop for users. The token launch came amid reports of a potential raise for the company at a $1 billion valuation. Blur’s token crossed $1 billion in volume less than a day after it was launched.

Blur followed up its token launch and airdrop by throwing down the gauntlet to OpenSea. The platform recommended a boycott of its rival by creators amid controversy over royalties. Opensea, for its part, temporarily changed its fee structure. The NFT marketplace giant adopted a temporary zero-fee regime amid other changes.

Bitcoin hits resistance at $25,200

Bitcoin and the crypto space in general continued the upward price march that has characterized 2023 thus far. Despite the negative news from the regulatory front, bitcoin surged more than 10% this week.

These gains saw bitcoin cross $25,000 for the first time since June 2022. BTC, however, retraced slightly, having touched a local resistance point at the $25,200 level. Crypto market capitalization approached the $1.2 trillion mark this past week.