Investing.com - Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrency prices plunged on Thursday amid a report that Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) is pulling back on plans to set up a crypto trading desk, as it still sees the regulatory environment as ambiguous.
Bitcoin plunged 15.1% to $6,433.2 at 12:05AM ET (04:05 GMT) on the Bitifinex exchange, while Ethereum slumped 25.6% to $226.5.
Meanwhile, XRP traded at $0.28382, down by 15.6% in the last 24 hours on the Poloniex exchange, while Litecoin also plunged 21.9% to $55.343.
Citing people familiar with the matter, Business Insider reported that the plan for a crypto trading desk is no longer on its priority list. Instead, the banking giant is now considering other digital-coin services, such as a custody product.
“In response to client interest in various digital products we are exploring how best to serve them in this space,” a spokesman for Goldman Sachs said. “At this point we have not reached a conclusion on the scope of our digital asset offering.”
The news came after The bank's CEO Lloyd Blankfein said on his twitter account in October that Goldman was "still thinking about bitcoin."
"No conclusion - not endorsing/rejecting. Know that folks also were skeptical when paper money displaced gold," Blankfein said at the time.
“The expectation of adoption by Wall Street has been a major theme for the cryptocurrency market for the last year, so any kind of updates on that can certainly move the prices,” Mati Greenspan, senior market analyst at currency trader eToro, told Bloomberg in a phone interview. “Even if it’s not true, it should be enough to cause a minor selloff like this in cryptocurrencies.”