Investing.com - Bitcoin and other virtual currencies continued to fall on Tuesday amid news that Twitter was banning cryptocurrency ads and payment processor LitePay has ceased operating.
Bitcoin was trading at $7,943.9, falling 2.06% as of 7:59 AM ET (11:59 GMT) the Bitfinex exchange, above its session low of $7,772.60. The cryptocurrency has struggled to gain ground after falling to $6,000 in early February and is far from its peak of $20,000 in December.
Litecoin was down 5.31% to trade at $143.84 after news that payment processor LitePay had terminated operations, just one month after its launch in February. The Litecoin Foundation, which oversees the development of Litecoin and invests in LitePay, said CEO Kenneth Asare had told the organization days ago that he was ceasing operations and looking to sell the company.
The Litecoin Foundation apologized to investors on its website.
"We are greatly disheartened that this saga has ended in this way and we apologize for not doing enough due diligence that could have uncovered some of these issues earlier,” the statement said. “We are currently working hard to tighten our due diligence practices and ensure that this does not happen again."
In other news, Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) has joined the ranks of Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) in banning cryptocurrency ads. The social media site was rumored to have been considering the move, but made an official announcement on Monday. The new policy will be rolled out over the next 30 days and will ban exchange platforms and wallet services not public companies listed on major stock exchanges.
Other virtual currencies were lower, with rival Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, down 6.07% to $458.27 on the Bitfinex exchange. Ripple, the third largest virtual currency, slipped 2.78% to $0.57518.