Investing.com - Bitcoin fell on Friday, as South Korea paved the way for regulation and India banned banks from trading in cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin was trading at $6,578.80, falling 0.94% on the Bitfinex exchange, as of 8:39 AM ET (12:39 GMT). Bitcoin has struggled to gain ground in recent months, falling nearly 70% since its peak of almost $20,000 in December.
Cryptocurrencies overall were lower, with the coin market cap of total market capitalization down at $268 billion at the time of writing compared to $273 billion on Thursday.
Ethereum fell 1.86% to $466.77 on the Bitfinex exchange. Ripple, the third largest virtual currency, decreased 2.85% to $0.47684 while Litecoin was at $83.346, down 1.52%.
In South Korea, digital coin exchanges could be considered “crypto asset exchanges and brokerages,” paving the way for legitimizing cryptocurrencies in Asia.
The government is expected to release full details on the new system later this month.
Meanwhile in India, banks and financial institutions are prohibited from participating in any virtual currency related transactions. The ban is expected to continue until markets stabilize.
In other news, a report from research firm GlobalData contends that digital coins are expensive, slow and cannot scale to meet demand.
“The Visa payment network is capable of supporting 24,000 transactions per second (tps) at peak rates and regularly averages in the region of 1,500 tps. Bitcoin, meanwhile, struggles to achieve a transaction rate over 10 tps, while bitcoin cash can handle around 60 tps,” the report stated.