Decentral Block Post

Ripple’s chief legal officer Stuart Alderoty has called for an investigation into the motivations that led to former SEC official William Hinman delivering his now-infamous speech in 2018.

Alderoty’s demand for an investigation came as part of a June 13 Twitter thread following the public release of the Hinman documents. The documents revealed that Hinman’s speech was delivered despite warnings from other SEC divisions.

In the 2018 speech, Hinman asserted that Ether (ETH) is not a security as a result of it becoming “sufficiently decentralized,” before elaborating on what factors must be satisfied when making that determination.

Alderoty argued that according to the newly released documents, Hinman had ignored the warnings of other SEC officials suggesting “his speech contained made-up analysis with no basis in law,” and that the speech ended up sending confusing messages to the cryptocurrency industry regarding what constitutes a security.

Alderoty said that unelected bureaucrats should only apply the law rather than trying to create new ones, and added that “Hinman’s speech should never again be invoked in any serious discussion about whether a token is or is not a security.”

Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao has refuted accusations that Binance has been secretly selling Bitcoin (BTC) to artificially stabilize the price of its native token Binance Coin (BNB).

The rumors have come from several market commentators, including analyst Dylan LeClair and Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten, who have accused Binance of intentionally manipulating the market to artificially inflate the value of BNB.

In a June 13 tweet, CZ said that Binance had not sold any of their BTC or BNB, adding that the crypto exchange still held “a bag” of FTX Token (FTT) — the native token of the now-defunct crypto exchange FTX.

“It is amazing they can know exactly who sold based on just a price chart involving millions of traders. FUD,” he added.

CZ’s post was direct response to a June 14 post from technical analysis platform Skew, which accused Binance of manipulating the market through a series of trades involving BTC, BNB and Tether (USDT):

Bitcoin has been trading in a narrow 3.4% range for the past three days after successfully defending the $25,500 support on June 10. In this time, investors’ attention has shifted to the macroeconomic area as the United States Federal Reserve will announce its interest rate decision on June 14.

Cryptocurrencies might work independently from the traditional finance markets, but the cost of capital impacts almost every investor. Back in May, the Fed raised its benchmark interest rate to 5–5.25%, the highest since 2007.

All eyes will be on Fed Chair Jerome Powell's media speech 30 minutes after the rate announcement as markets are pricing in 94% odds of a pause at the June meeting, based on the CME FedWatch tool.

Crypto fears more than just an FOMC meeting

The upcoming Federal Open Market Committee meeting isn’t the only concern for the economy, as the U.S. Treasury is set to issue more than $850 billion in new bills between now and September.

Additional government debt issuance tends to cause higher yields and, thus, higher borrowing costs for companies and families. Considering the already-restrained credit market due to the recent banking crisis, odds are that gross domestic product growth will be severely compromised in the coming months.