Investing.com – Bitcoin rebounded on Tuesday as the popular digital currency’s fall to November lows appeared to entice investors to return to the industry supporting an uptick in total cryptocurrency market cap.
The total cryptocurrency market cap rose to $368 billion, up $20 billion from Monday, after three straight days of declines. Yet, it remains to is a temporary lift or the start of trend as the total cryptomarket cap remains well below its early January peak of roughly $829 billion.
The rebound in bitcoin comes as investors mulled over reassuring comments on the value of bitcoin from Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo.
"It's important to remember that if there were no bitcoin, there would be no distributed ledger technology," Giancarlo said, when asked by Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton about the value of the technology underlying cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.
Yet regulatory jitters continued to weigh on overall sentiment as US regulators step up efforts to increase oversight of virtual currency like bitcoin.
“We may be back with our friends from Treasury and the Fed to ask for additional legislation,” SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said when asked whether Congress needed to act on virtual currencies.
This comes amid efforts from major banks across the US and UK to curb cryptocurrency activity after they halted cryptocurrency purchases on credit, striking a better blow to crypto-investors who use credit cards to fund their cryptocurrency investment.
For the uninitiated, cryptoinvestors usually purchase digital currencies by exchanging some form of fiat currency – currency that a government has declared to be legal tender – for a funding digital currency like Bitcoin or Ethereum, which can also be used to buy "altcoins" like Stellar.
Bitcoin rose 8.25% to $7,679, while Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, rose 11.34% to $784.98.
Ripple XRP, meanwhile, rose 5.70% to $0.76.