Here’s what happened in crypto today
Today in crypto, the SEC is reportedly prioritizing pausing crypto enforcement cases with imminent deadlines while addressing regulatory gaps; Bitcoin’s price action is raising concerns of possible market manipulation, according to Samson Mow, and the US Senate has confirmed Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary.SEC first pausing crypto lawsuits with imminent deadlines: ReportThe US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has reportedly been prioritizing pausing cryptocurrency enforcement cases with imminent deadlines, which is partly why the securities regulator hasn’t yet paused its lawsuits against crypto firms Ripple and Kraken, according to Fox Business reporter Eleanor Terrett.The next court deadline for Ripple, the XRP Ledger blockchain network’s developer, isn’t until April 16. Meanwhile, cryptocurrency exchange Kraken’s next deadline is March 31, Terrett said in a Feb. 19 X post, citing several unnamed sources. Cointelegraph did not independently verify the information.Terrett added that cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase and Binance do not face court deadlines until March 14 and April 14, respectively. “It’s possible SEC leadership is expecting @realDonaldTrump’s pick for chair Paul Atkins to be on his way to getting confirmed by that time,” Terrett said. “In the interim, the crypto task force, Congress and the Presidential Working Group on Digital Assets are presumably working to fill the regulatory gaps that led to these lawsuits being brought in the first place.”Bitcoin’s price movement “looks very manufactured”Bitcoin’s price action is raising concerns of possible market manipulation as the cryptocurrency continues trading in a tight range despite billions of dollars in institutional inflows.Bitcoin has been range-bound for over two months, trading between the $92,400 support and $106,500 resistance since Dec. 18, 2024, Cointelegraph Markets Pro data shows.Bitcoin managed to briefly escape this range after US President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, when it briefly rose to the $109,000 all-time high before dropping back into its previous range.Bitcoin’s range-bound price action may be manufactured based on the trajectory of the past months, according to Samson Mow, CEO of Jan3 and founder of Pixelmatic.“It seems like it’s some sort of price suppression,” said Mow during a panel discussion at Consensus Hong Kong 2025, adding:“If you look at the price movement, we peak, and then we stay steady and chop sideways. And it’s good, you can say it’s consolidation, but it just looks very manufactured.”“The very tight range in which you’re trading just doesn’t look natural at all,” Mow added.Trump pick Lutnick in as commerce secretaryThe US Senate has confirmed Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary in a 52-45 vote, putting in place President Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Commerce.Lutnick immediately stepped down as the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment firm with ties to Tether, a point that Senator Elizabeth Warren publicly pressed him on last month, questioning his “deep personal ties” to the major crypto stablecoin issuer.He’ll now head the nearly 47,000-employee-strong Commerce Department that has people in every US state and in over 86 countries who do everything from gathering business data, looking after patents, drumming up foreign investment, and even forecasting the weather.Lutnick said in December 2023 that he was a “fan” of crypto, particularly Bitcoin (BTC), pointing to Bitcoin’s halving cycles and lack of a centralized entity as two main reasons he sees value in holding it.