Investing.com – Cryptocurrencies’ prices rebound on Friday, despite reports that a French stock market regulator blacklisted 15 crytocurrency and crypto-asset investments.
Bitcoin was trading at $8,078.3 by ET 11:30PM on the Bitfinex exchange, up 2.5% over the previous 24 hours.
Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, gained 3.1% at $600.12 on the Bitfinex exchange.
Ripple’s XRP token jumped 5.9% to $0.68540 on the Poloniex exchange.
Meanwhile, Litecoin was trading 4.6% higher at $161.60.
The Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF) said in a press release on Friday that they have added 15 cryptocurrency websites to their blacklist.
“The investment proposals highlighting the possibility of financial returns or similar economic effects involve intermediation in miscellaneous assets and are now subject to ex ante control by the AMF. Consequently, no offer can be directly marketed in France without prior allocation by the AMF of a registration number,” said AMF in the statement.
The announcement followed similar move from the French government last year. In December, the governor of the Bank of France issued a warning that claimed Bitcoin is merely a speculative asset, and that it is neither a currency or a digital currency. Jean-Pierre Landau, head of a French-based task force, called Bitcoin the “tulips of modern times”.
Elsewhere, South Korea's Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office were reportedly investigating three cryptocurrency exchanges, alleging they used money stolen from customers’ accounts to buy bitcoin.
A spokesperson said that they had conducted searches in the offices of the questionable exchanges and confiscated money transfer receipts, mobile phones, accounting files, and computer hard disks.