Investing.com – Ripple’s XRP struggled to recover losses as the threat of regulation continued to weigh on sentiment, while bitcoin attempted to defend a key level but remained under pressure.
The South Korean government said Monday it will propose a corporate and local income tax on the country’s digital currency exchanges this year of up to 24.2%, Yonhap News Agency reported. This comes after news surfaced last week suggested that a host of other countries including France and Germany were preparing measures to regulate bitcoin.
The threat of regulation is said to be the main reason for the selloff as some investors sought to exit positions, fearing another deep retreat in cryptos after billions were wiped off the crypto-market during last week’s crash.
The total cryptocurrency market cap slumped to a low of around $478 billion at the depth of the crash on Wednesday before rebounding to around $562 billion Friday. That is markedly lower than the $829 billion total market cap set less than two weeks ago on Jan. 7.
New inflows following the crash, however, have been few and far between as current total market cap at around $505 billion remains close to the last week’s lows.
Ripple XRP fell 9.01% to $1.16 well below its all-time high of $3.28 on the poloniex exchange. While Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, fell 6.58% to $938.90.
Bitcoin, fell 8.14% to $10,185 as it attempts to test last week’s low of $9231.