INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
By Eric LamCryptocurrencies continued their slide with a fresh bout of losses Friday after the SEC dashed hopes that a Bitcoin
exchange-traded fund would appear before the end of this year.
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, slumped as much as 8.2 percent, taking
it down past $3,400 to the lowest level since September 2017, according to consolidated pricing compiled by Bloomberg
The wider Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index sank 8.4 percent as rival tokens including Ether, Litecoin and XRP also retreated.
The Securities
and Exchange Commission plans to decide by Feb
27 whether to approve a proposed ETF from financial-technology company SolidX Partners Inc
and asset manager Van Eck Associates Corp., the agency said Dec
6.
The proposal was set to get a decision from the SEC in December after previous delays and the new timeline is a fresh blow to an industry
that’s seen prices fall throughout 2018
A key impediment has been a lack of mainstream institutional adoption, alongside continuing security and regulatory concerns.
“Sentiment
in the market is really bad, any negative news has an exponential effect,” said Timothy Tam, co-founder and CEO of CoinFi, a
cryptocurrency research firm.
With the latest rout, Bitcoin has now fallen more than 80 percent from its all-time high a year ago and is
trading about 50 percent below its 200-day moving average, the most since January 2015, according to Bloomberg calculations
Cryptocurrencies have erased almost $730 billion in value from a peak in January, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com.
