The bitcoin fall, the vice of the regulations tighten

LONDON (Reuters) – The price of bitcoin has lost up to 18% on Tuesday to fall to its lowest level for almost a month, the threat of a strict framework of transactions on the most publicized of cryptomonnaies more and more accurate.

The fall of bitcoin has spread to other virtual currencies such as Ethereum, which has yielded up to 23% according to the specialized site Coinmarketcap, and the Ripple, in which the decrease amounted to 33%.

The news website, the south Korean Yonhap reported Tuesday about the minister of Finance of South Korea, Kim Dong-yeon, on the willingness of the government to put in place a series of measures to stem the craze “irrational” for the cryptomonnaies.

On Monday, Seoul said that its plans to ban pure and simple platforms trading on cryptomonnaies was not yet complete and that the discussions continued on the topic.

Based on information from Yonhap, the bitcoin fell up 11.191,us $ 59 on the platform Bitstamp is based in Luxembourg, a decrease of 18%. At about 11: 00 GMT, it was 11.8% at 12.002,01 dollars.

Its fall of around 45% compared with the peak from mid-December to approximately 19.700 dollars, detaching it from about $ 130 billion dollars (107 billion euros) the total value of all bitcoins existing. It had been multiplied by a factor of almost 20 over the whole of 2017.

KOREA, CHINA AND GERMANY WANT TO REGULATE THE MARKET

The craze for cryptomonnaies last year, which has attracted thousands of individual investors, and sometimes neophytes, has led several countries to show in recent weeks their desire to regulate this market, whose growth is favoured by the absence of any specific regulation.

In China, an official of the central bank called Tuesday for a ban, pure and simple platforms trading on cryptomonnaies, according to a document that Reuters was able to consult.

Beijing has already banned the broadcasts of ‘chips’ or tokens, the ICO (initial corner offerings, capital raising activities in cyptomonnaies) and limited the possibilities of “mining”, that is to say, of creation of bitcoins.

If the us authorities remain, for the moment, discrete on the subject, there are voices in Europe to claim they also the establishment of a regulatory framework: in December, the european Union intends to put an end to the anonymity of transactions on the cryptomonnaies the name of the fight against money laundering and terrorism () and on Monday, a leader of the German Bundesbank, has called for global coordination of regulation.

“It seems that the uncertainty undermines markets (…) lack of clarity on the regulation”, said on Tuesday Charles Hayter, the founder of a website specialized Cryptocompare, adding that investors “take profits in the face of the prospect of a rising risk”.

(Jemima Kelly; Marc Angrand for French service, edited by Blandine Hénault)