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31/01/2018

January A Bad Month For Cryptocurrencies Amidst Facebook Ban And Other Teething Concerns




January A Bad Month For Cryptocurrencies Amidst Facebook Ban And Other Teething Concerns
The month of January appears to be a bad one for cryptocurrency investors.
 
There has been a slip in almost all of the digital coins. Bitcoin is all set to record its worst monthly fall since February 2014. There are two drivers for this – Facebook planning to ban all advertisements related to digital currencies and the increased scrutiny of one of the largest digital currency exchanges in the world by U.S. regulators.
 
According to composite pricing compiled market experts, as of 8:35 in London, bitcoin is trading at $10,172 and has recorded a fall of about 29 per cent in January itself. While there has bene a 47 per cent increase in value of Ethereum, there have been fall of 45 per cent and 29 per cent respectively in the values of bitcoin rival coins Ripple and Litecoin.
 
The four coins were little changed on Wednesday.
 
“The regulatory oversight and the clampdown is really coming to the fore right now,” Stephen Innes, head of trading for Asia Pacific at Oanda, said. “I don’t think we’ve seen the last of it.”
 
Sources have told the media that cryptocurrency trading venue Bitfinex and Tether have been sent subpoenas on Dec. 6 by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Tether is a firm that issues a broadly traded virtual coin which the firm claims is pegged to the dollar. Both the firms in question have same chief executive officer.
 
On the other hand, all forms of advertisement that are related to promotions of digital currencies, initial coin offerings and binary options will be banned on the largest social media platform in the world – Facebook. The company warned that such ads are “frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices.”
 
In recent years, there has been a number of people and companies that have emerged and have raised money from people by the issuing of ICOs or initial coin offering. There are allegations that the companies offering ICOs do not apparently have any valid business to back the ICOs. These events have forced the U.S. regulators to become stricter and crack down on the cryptocurrency industry. A Texas based initial coin offering had claimed that it had managed to raise over $600 million and a court order freezing the assets of the company were obtained this week by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency said. According to the order, no additional cash can be raised from investors by AriseBank.
 
Since the theft of a record value of court order freezing the assets court order freezing the assets in cryptocurrencies court order freezing the assets there has been no rallying in virtual currencies. Such events have enhanced the demands and calls for more regulators and oversight in global trading countries like South Korea.
 
(Source:www.bloomberg.com)

Christopher J. Mitchell

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