Tornado cash (TORN) token trading volumes jumped sixfold amid the announcement of sanctions against the mixer. This was pointed out by Kaiko analysts in their newsletter. TORN’s trading volume rose from less than $5 million to $60 million on the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. The growth in trading volume was also recorded on OKEx, but there the figures were significantly lower. Tornado cash sanctions are to blame. 

At Binance, tornado cash sold out. According to Kaiko, several decentralized exchanges (including Uniswap, dYdX, and Aave) imposed restrictions on wallets contacting the Tornado Cash mixer. Whether this was the reason for the increase in liquidity is unclear.

However, the increase in trading volume seems to have led to heavy selling of TORN. As the volume of capital on the centralized exchanges increased, TORN quotations fell faster and faster. Now, TORN in the TORN/USDT pair is trading at $12.7, according to Nomics. Over the past seven days, the price of TORN has fallen by more than 23%. Market capitalization collapsed to $19.3 million.

Recall that in early August, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on the Tornado Cash mixer. The regulator estimated that the platform had helped launder more than $7 billion in assets since its launch in 2019.

Shortly after the sanctions were announced, Circle, the issuer of one of the most capitalized Stablecoins, USD Coin (USDC), froze 75,000 USDC of the cryptomixer’s users and 149 USDC that the project received in donations. Analysts at The Block Research found that transfers to the platform were down 78.5 percent compared to the period before the announcement of sanctions against Tornado Cash.

We previously reported that S&P Global downgraded Coinbase to speculative. 

Eqonex news: public U.S. crypto exchange Eqonex (EQOS) will close its services to customers on August 22 due to high market competition and a decline in trading volume. The exchange announced this on its official website.

The company will close its trading functionality at the end of August and will phase out cryptocurrency withdrawals on September 14. Also, Eqonex will stop trading the native token EQO, whose trading volume over the past month only occasionally and briefly, exceeded the threshold of $10,000.

The company will not close, but will continue to provide capital management and custody services for cryptocurrencies in the form of a custodian.

According to Eqonex CEO Jonathan Farnell, closing the exchange will improve Eqonex’s financial position by significantly reducing its cost structure and freeing up resources to spur growth in segments where the company has a “significant competitive advantage.” At the time of writing, the market has not reacted to the news of Eqonex’s closure.

In July, many cryptocurrency exchanges saw a decline in trading activity. The strongest decline in trading volume was seen on exchanges such as LBank (by more than 50%), Huobi (by 31.3%) and Gate (by 31.2%). crypto.com and Bitfinex saw trading volume drop by 25%.

On the other hand, some exchanges saw a significant increase in spot trading volume in July. Binance US increased by 76.7%; OKX by 30%, and Phemex by 227.4%. Bitmart and Binance grew by 18% and 9.3%, respectively.

We previously reported that Investors Asked Asian Crypto Exchange’s CEO To Step Down.

Despite lower market volatility, miners are still dumping bitcoin. Because of this, bitcoin also plummets as miners sell inventory. This was reported in a report by Arcane analysts. According to published data, in July, miners poured 6200 BTC (~$149 million at the current exchange rate). By comparison, miners sold out about 15,000 BTC in June.

However, even though the scale is down, July was still the second highest month since the beginning of 2022 for bitcoin sales by miners. Arcane analyst Jaran Mellerud claims that public miners sold 158% of the cryptocurrency mined during July. This is the third month in a row that miners have sold all the cryptocurrency (and even more) than they manage to mine in a month. It was also previously reported that bitcoin miners sell off because of unprofitable mining. 

Arcane named mining companies Core Scientific and Bitfarms as the main culprits of the dump. This, according to Mellerud, is because the companies took out too many loans to grow their businesses. In addition to them, bitcoin was also sold at Nothern Data, Argo, and CleanSpark.

Recall that in mid-June the co-founder of the mining firm Luxor Technologies Ethan Vera said that many lenders (Bable Finance, Galaxy Digital, bankrupt Celsius Network, BlockFi, Foundry Networks) are concerned that they have made too many loans to secure the mining devices themselves. He estimates that the firms have made a combined $4 billion in loans.

Luka Jankovic, head of credit at Galaxy Digital, noted at the time that at June bitcoin rates (at or below $20,000), many mining centers were operating at a loss. 

We previously reported that BitGo declined to buy the cryptocurrency depository.