Major coins showed signs of gains on Sunday evening as the global cryptocurrency market cap rose 0.4% to $812.8 billion at 7:35 p.m. EST.

Why It Matters: Risk assets were showing feeble gains on Sunday evening with stock futures largely trading flat ahead of a fresh trading week.

Investors will look forward to the continuation of the earnings season and the survey from The National Association of Home Builders which is a measure of monthly sentiment this week.

Bitcoin is declining as risk aversion runs wild on recession fears and on growing concerns that another crypto exchange could be at risk of massive withdrawals." 

- said Edward Moya, a senior market analyst with OANDA, in a recent note seen by Benzinga.

Going ahead into a new trading week — Alternative.Me's "Crypto Fear & Greed Index" indicated investor sentiment was unchanged from "Fear" compared with the last week's reading.

Last week was dominated by the news surrounding Binance — the largest spot cryptocurrency exchange. Glassnode noted that the platform had seen $3.2 billion in combined stablecoin outflows as of Friday.

The on-chain analysis firm said that Binance accounted for 66% of all stablecoin outflows that it tracked which is in line with market share.

Binance said last week that auditing firm Mazars had suspended working with cryptocurrency companies including itself. The announcement from the Changpeng Zhao-led company led to a drop in the valuations of major coins — including Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Zhao appeared on a CNBC interview last week and said the big four auditing firms "don't know how to audit cryptocurrency exchanges."

Binance CEO CZ on CNBC:
Many big four firms do not know how to audit crypto exchanges. 

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) December 15, 2022

Glassnode said that exchange balances and proof-of-reserves is a "nuanced" topic since it requires checking both on-chain assets and also off-chain liabilities. The platform said Binance held nearly $40 billion in various cryptocurrency assets as of Friday.