Crypto Today: Bitcoin struggles to stay above $15K, Ethereum extends gains

Worries over South Korea's government intervention escalate.
Total market cap drops below $750 billion.
Ripple drops more than 10% on the day.

Eren Sengezer FXStreet

After recording substantial losses on Sunday and Monday, the BTC/USD struggled to recover its losses as investors remained on the edge amid news of South Korea and Japan ramping up efforts to interfere with crypto exchanges. "Cryptocurrencies trade at a premium in South Korea because of keen demand and the difficulty of setting up offshore accounts to buy them. Bitcoin is trading at a 70 per cent premium in South Korea over international rates," the Financial Times pointed out in a recently published article. As of writing, the pair was trading at $14,906.80, losing 2% on the day, according to the latest available data on coinmarketcap.com.

Meanwhile, Ripple suffered heavy losses for the second day in a row with the XRP/USD pair dropping more than 10% on the day. Concerned over the government intervention, investors might be looking to take their profits following the pair's impressive rally that started in late December and carried over to first few trading days of 2018.

With Ripple losing its popularity, Etherum retook the title of the second largest cryptocurrency in terms of trading volume on Monday and extended its gains on Tuesday. At the moment, the ETH/USD pair is up nearly 7% at $1230.

The total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies, which rose to an all-time high of $830 billion on Monday, decreased for the second day in a row and was around $740 billion in the late US afternoon.

Author

Eren Sengezer

FXStreet

As an economist at heart, Eren Sengezer specializes in the assessment of the short-term and long-term impacts of macroeconomic data, central bank policies and political developments on financial assets.

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