Investing.com - The crypto market traded in the red on Friday morning in Asia after gaining some steam this week.
Bitcoin dropped 4.12% to $8,287.3 by 11:25 PM ET (03:25 GMT). The coin once reached $9,029.3 overnight, the highest point of this year, but then it lost steam to trade at the $8,300 range this morning.
With that said, this is still the coin’s strongest momentum since the beginning of this year when it traded at around $3,500.
Ethereum lost 6.90% to $254.08, XRP shed 6.41% to $0.41757, and Litecoin was down 6.17% to $107.88.
The total market cap dropped to $262.2 billion from $278.9 billion the previous day.
Japan’s financial regulators were said to be cautious with cryptocurrency-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) despite the country being known as crypto-friendly.
Speaking at the finance committee of the upper house of the National Diet on May 30, a representative from Financial Services Agency (FSA) said cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin lack intrinsic value, and price volatility would be unbearable.
But crypto ETFs still garnered some support among the policymakers. Local politician Takeshi Fujimaki said crypto assets could be entrusted to banks and kept by custodians to address concerns about hacking. He added that crypto ETFs would help the industry grow and make institutional investment easier.
This month, Japan introduced amendments to two of the country’s financial laws, namely the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act and Payment Services Act to add legislation for crypto margin trading.