SOL, ADA, MATIC Prices Stabilize as Foundations Hit Back on SEC Lawsuit Allegations

Investors of Solana's SOL, Cardano's ADA and Polygon's MATIC, which were impacted by a sudden sell-off over the weekend, had a reason to cheer on Monday as prices stabilized and reversed some losses.

SOL rose 2.2%, ADA was up 3.5%, while MATIC surged 5.5%, data from CoinGecko shows. Futures data showed relatively low open interest and liquidations, suggesting the move was led by spot trading.

The development foundations of these tokens separately released statements in the past few days that hit back on U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allegations, likely boosting investor confidence.

Solana Foundation said on Thursday that it did not consider SOL to be a security, with some developers stating they did not expect development atop the Solana network to decline in the coming weeks. Elsewhere on Friday, Cardano developer IOG said the SEC's lawsuit contained “numerous factual inaccuracies,” and that “under no circumstances was ADA a security.”

On Sunday, Polygon Labs said MATIC was “developed outside the U.S., deployed outside the U.S.,” and “available to a wide group of persons, but only with actions that did not target the US at any time.”

Earlier last week, the SEC accused crypto exchanges Binance of Coinbase of multiple charges, such as offering unlicensed securities to U.S. investors, and named alleged tokens to be securities.

These tokens were issued by foundations and companies or tied to several protocols. Sandbox (SAND), Filecoin (FIL), Axie Infinity (AXS), Chiliz (CHZ), Flow (FLOW), Internet Computer (ICP), Near (NEAR), Voyager (VGX), Dash (DASH) and Nexo (NEXO) were named as securities.

On Saturday, prices of SOL, ADA, MATIC fell as much as 30%. On-chain data suggested millions of dollars worth of MATIC was sent from trading companies Jump Trading and Cumberland to exchanges before the drop – suggesting investors were offloading tokens named in the SEC filings.

As such, bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) fell only up to 4.5% in an unusual move at the time.

Meanwhile, bitcoin's dominance rate or share in the total crypto market capitalization rose early Saturday, nearing the 50% mark for the first time since April 2021, according to data tracked by charting platform TradingView.