Crypto Market Update: Bitcoin Touches August Low Amid NVIDIA Probe

Bitcoin price update

Bitcoin (BTC) was priced at US$74,772.81, trading 1.4 percent lower over the past 24 hours.

Bitcoin price chart

Bitcoin has experienced volatile price action, dipping to multi-month lows late on Sunday (November 8) before rebounding above US$75,000 amid significant leveraged liquidations across the broader crypto market.

The decline came after NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang admitted to an affair with a woman US officials believe was spying for China. The popular token rebounded above US$75,000 before the bounce stalled.

NVIDIA's board opened an independent investigation after reports that Huang had a relationship with Alice Huang, a business executive whom US intelligence agencies believe was passing information to Beijing.

The NVIDIA leader acknowledged the affair in a message to employees, writing that he had been unfaithful to his wife and apologizing for the harm caused.

NVIDIA said it has no reason to believe anyone has compromised national security or company secrets, but that its inquiry will examine all available information. The board is overseeing the review with outside independent counsel.

NVIDIA is the largest stock by market cap and sits at the center of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, which has fueled risk taking across markets, including crypto, in recent years.

It also sits at the center of US-China tech competition.

Washington restricts exports of NVIDIA's most advanced AI chips to China, and Megaspeed, the company linked to Alice Huang, faces accusations that it helped restricted Chinese firms obtain NVIDIA chips.

Ether and altcoin price update

• Ethereum (ETH) was priced at US$2,124.87, trading 4.6 percent lower over the last 24 hours.

• XRP (XRP) was priced at US$1.09, trading 5.3 percent lower over the past 24 hours.

• Solana (SOL) was trading at US$86.33, trading 3.4 percent lower over the past 24 hours.

Today's crypto news to know

Read on for a round-up of the biggest crypto market news:

• Crypto trust charters advance amid regulatory pushback and ICBA lawsuit
• Avalanche selected for NYSE tokenized platform
• Buterin defends anti-data center movement
• FinCEN order targets MEXC over alleged Russia, Iran links

Crypto trust charters advance amid regulatory pushback and ICBA lawsuit

Coinbase Global (NASDAQ:COIN) announced it has secured a national trust charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), upgrading its conditional approval from April.

The charter allows Coinbase to offer federally regulated custody and payment services, though it cannot take deposits or issue loans. This follows Ripple receiving its national trust charter last month.

Meanwhile, Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) is suing the OCC over a March rule change expanding national trust bank activities from strictly "fiduciary activities" to broader "operations of a trust company and activities related thereto." While the OCC maintains this adjustment merely clarifies existing permissions such as asset custody, the ICBA contends the update exceeds the regulator's authority.

In other news, Coinbase said it is working with PNC Bank on a small test that lets some of PNC’s corporate and institutional clients get paid in USDC. The USDC changes into US dollars automatically when it arrives and goes into the client’s PNC account. No date was given for a wider rollout.

Avalanche selected for NYSE tokenized platform

Ava Labs, the company behind the Avalanche blockchain, said on Monday that Avalanche will be the core record-keeping system used to clear and settle trades on the NYSE's planned platform for tokenized securities.

The NYSE affiliate’s platform aims to let its members trade and settle around the clock, pending regulatory approval.

“The upcoming digital trading platform will support equities listed on a range of blockchains,” said Dennis Lee, the NYSE’s head of digital issuance. No launch date was given.

Buterin defends anti-data center movement

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin defended the anti-data-center movement in an X post on Sunday, arguing that slower compute growth would give the world more time to prepare for AI risks.

Buterin said he disagrees with the strong emotional reaction to anti-data-center groups. He based his case on algorithmic progress: by his estimate, whatever bigger data centers can do in two years, today’s will manage in four, or sooner. Even extreme success for the movement would therefore cause nothing close to a disaster, he argued.

Cybersecurity problems are already visible and bio risks may follow soon, Buterin said, so the world needs every bit of time to prepare. He added that science faces many bottlenecks besides AI, so delaying AI by a year would slow research by far less. He said his view does not rely on doomer claims about recursive self improvement, in which AI systems upgrade themselves. At Devcon 8, he warned that AI could crack crypto by finding shortcuts through its cryptography.

BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) CEO Larry Fink has taken the opposite view, warning that halting data center construction would push the US into recession.

FinCEN order targets MEXC over alleged Russia, Iran links

The US Department of the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) moved on November 6 to cut crypto exchange MEXC off from the US financial system.

FinCEN alleges that MEXC handled at least US$16 billion tied to Iranian, North Korean and Russian sanctions evasion, cybercrime and other illicit activity over five years.

FinCEN issued the order under Section 9714 of the Combating Russian Money Laundering Act.

Once it takes effect, 30 days after publication in the Federal Register, it will bar US financial institutions from sending funds to or receiving funds from MEXC, including crypto transfers.

FinCEN alleges that MEXC processed nearly US$1.5 billion linked to Russian sanctions evasion between May 2021 and May 2026. That total includes transactions involving sanctioned exchange Garantex and its successor Grinex as recently as June. The agency also identified about US$1 billion in alleged direct transfers to more than 40 Iranian crypto exchanges, plus US$22 million linked to Iran’s central bank and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

MEXC is the largest crypto exchange FinCEN has targeted under the provision.

The Treasury said MEXC ranked among the world’s 20 largest crypto exchanges as of September, processing more than US$1 billion in daily trades and holding about US$5 billion in reserves. MEXC said last month it would stop serving users in Russia and Belarus, further adding that it is reviewing the order, continues to operate normally and has launched an independent review of its anti-money laundering and sanctions controls.