Messari CEO: A new wave of crypto regulation may be coming

Messari CEO and founder Ryan Selkis said regulators may view the recent growth of cryptocurrencies as a problem.

“I’ve never been more bullish on crypto, but I think everyone may have misjudged global regulatory risk,” Selkis tweeted Thursday.

“When crypto looks like a toy, it’s not a threat. When stablecoins reach PayPal volumes and go private, it starts to look like a weapon.”

In the months since falling below $4,000 in March 2020, the price of Bitcoin has surpassed $60,000. DeFi assets have also surged over the past year or so. Yearn.finance (YFI) has risen from less than $1,000 to more than $48,000, according to CoinMarketCap. The current industry craze, NFT, may be the most enthusiastic of them all — an artist named Beeple recently sold an NFT artwork at auction for $69 million.

Selkis noted that his Bitcoin price target is the price at which people feel they can take profits, relative to regulatory concerns. “I have an $80k sell order set up ahead of time,” he tweeted. He responded to a comment he originally posted with another tweet: “5% sell $80k-100k, another 5% $100k-125k,” adding: “Then we’ll see how things play out.”

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) were a big deal during the last crypto boom in 2017. In the following years, U.S. regulators have tightened governance over the crypto industry, taking action against some projects. Regulation has also affected cryptocurrencies in various ways in other regions, including the European Union, which enacted the 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive. (Cointelegraph)