- Compound (COMP) was up 8% in the past 24 hours and 51% this past week.
- The gains for COMP token have come amid this week’s spike in whale activity.
- Also helping bulls looks to be a market reaction to Coinbase’s response to SEC allegations that the exchange lists securities.
Increased whale activity has seen the price of COMP, the native token of DeFi protocol Compound, soar to levels last witnessed in early March.
According to blockchain sleuth Loookonchain, Compound’s price upside coincides with increased activity by large holders. One of these wallets deposited $3.5 million of stablecoin Tether (USDT) on Binance earlier this week, and acquired 50,000 COMP.
The whale added another 120,000 COMP tokens to their holdings on Thursday.
The price of $COMP is up nearly 50% in the past week and a whale/institution may have bought $COMP!
Wallet"0x0D5" deposited 3M $USDT to #Binance on June 26 and withdrew 50K $COMP ($2.26M) 16 hrs ago.https://t.co/gMLDUwJVst pic.twitter.com/IXyocTJKVh
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) June 29, 2023
Daily trading volume for Compound was $89 million at the time of writing, down 12% in the past 24 hours. However, it remains significantly higher compared to the volume seen over the month.
For instance, historical data shows 24-hour volume ranged between $9.4 million and $13 million from June 17 to June 25, before spiking to $154 million on June 26.
COMP price also spikes amid Coinbase response to SEC
COMP had spiked to $47.98 on Coinbase as of 6:45 am ET on Thursday, with CoinGecko data showing the token’s value was +8% in the past 24 hours and over 51% higher in the past seven days.
COMP price movement on the daily chart. Source: TradingView
The DeFi token had traded at lows of $23.15 on June 10 amid sell-off pressure after the SEC sued Coinbase and listed a number of tokens it alleges are securities. These include Solana, Cardano, Chiliz, Flow, NEAR and Dash.
Market reaction pushed prices lower, with COMP among those to turn red as bears strengthened.
However, the latest upside comes as Coinbase filed a response to the SEC’s lawsuit.
On June 29, Coinbase filed a notice of intent seeking to dismiss the SEC’s case against it. According to the exchange, the regulator overstepped its jurisdiction and that the assets currently trading the US-based platform’s secondary market “are not within the SEC’s authority.”
Coinbase maintains the listed assets are not “securities” as SEC alleges. Paul Grewal, Chief Legal Officer at Coinbase says the exchange is open to engaging regulators, but SEC’s claims “go beyond existing law and should be dismissed.”