- Bitcoin drops below $14K on Thursday.
- Ripple recovers above $2.
- Total market cap decreases below $700 billion.
After making a technical correction on Wednesday, the BTC/USD pair came under a renewed pressure on Thursday and slumped to its lowest level since early January near the $13K mark. According to the latest available data on coinmarketcap.com, the pair was trading at $13,486.50, down 7.55% on the day.
On Thursday, South Korea's justice minister Park Sang-ki said that the government was planning to pass a legislation that would ban trading of cryptocurrencies in domestic exchanges in order to prevent tax evasion. “There are great concerns regarding virtual currencies and the justice ministry is basically preparing a bill to ban cryptocurrency trading through exchanges,” Park told reporters during a press conference. Meanwhile, citing sources familiar with the matter, Reuters reported that the U.S. Senate’s financial services panel was going to hold a hearing in February with the country’s top markets regulators to discuss bitcoin amid rising concerns over the risks cryptocurrencies pose to the financial system.
The negative sentiment surrounding the crypto space decreased the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies all the way down to $628 billion.
On the other hand, Ripple, which is seen as a cryptocurrency that is likely to be used largely by institutions, recorded modest gains on Thursday and edged higher above the $2 mark. As of writing, the XRP/USD pair was trading at $2.04 adding 2.76% on the day while XRP was up nearly 12% against BTC.
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