Investing.com – Bitcoin fell sharply on Tuesday, as the threat of regulation intensified after the Bank of England added to recent criticism levelled at industry, while the CFTC subpoenaed Bitfinex, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world.
“A lot of the underlying use for these currencies has been illicit activity, particularly money laundering,” Bank of England governor Mark Carney said. “One doesn’t have anonymity for bank account transactions, why would you for cryptocurrency transactions?”
Carney raised fears of a global regulatory effort to curb cryptocurrency activity, saying he expected that international regulators’ concerns about the use of digital currencies would be on the agenda at an upcoming G20 meeting.
Just a few days after Japanese regulators ordered crypto-exchange Coincheck to raise its standards, a report suggested that Bitfinex landed in regulatory hot water.
Bloomberg said, citing source, that Bitfinex and Tether, have been subpoenaed by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Yet for all the fear, uncertainty and doubt swirling in the crypto industry, capital outflows were limited as the total cryptocurrency market cap currently at $512 billion, was roughly unchanged from Monday, according to data from coinmarketcap.com. That, however, is only modestly above $478 billion - the level last seen following the so-called crypto-bloodbath on Jan. 16.
Despite the limited outflows, bitcoin and other large cap cryptocurrencies fell sharply.
Bitcoin fell 9.32% to $10,250, While Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, fell 8.14% to $1,079.40.
Ripple XRP, meanwhile, fell 11.84% to $1.13204, well below its all-time high of $3.28 on the poloniex exchange.