Bitcoin Hovers Near $8,000 Level as Investors Weigh Twitter Ban
Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency rose as much as 4.8 percent and was trading at $8,193.
(Bloomberg) -- Bitcoin swung between gains and losses around the $8,000 mark as investors digested the latest developments in a widening social-media crackdown on digital tokens.
The largest cryptocurrency traded at $7,964 as of 8:39 a.m. in New York, according to consolidated Bloomberg pricing. Twitter Inc. confirmed on Monday it’s banning advertisements for initial coin offerings and token sales on its platform, joining Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google on the list of tech giants keeping cryptos at bay. Rival coins Ripple, Ether and Litecoin fell.
Since reaching a peak of almost $20,000 in mid-December at the height of the cryptocurrency frenzy, Bitcoin has lost more than half of its value as investors weigh the future of the nascent industry amid intensifying scrutiny. Facebook banned crypto ads in January and Google said it would outlaw such ads starting in June.
Bitcoin earlier jumped as high as $8,265.87 following a decline on Monday of 8.4 percent. The digital token has now dropped by about a quarter in March alone.
Also on Monday, Cboe Global Markets Inc., the first U.S. exchange to list Bitcoin futures last year, prodded U.S. securities regulators to consider approving crypto exchange-traded funds in a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
While Bitcoin futures trading volumes can’t yet support ETFs, Cboe said it is encouraged by their growth trajectory and that there are “reliable and robust” ways to value Bitcoin and potentially other digital assets.
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To contact the reporters on this story: Eric Lam in Hong Kong at elam87@bloomberg.net, Yakob Peterseil in London at ypeterseil@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeremy Herron at jherron8@bloomberg.net, Samuel Potter, Dave Liedtka
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