Investing.com - Cryptocurrencies traded in the red on Tuesday morning in Asia, with Bitcoin struggling to test the $4,000 level and the crypto market capitalization losing 2.5% in one day.
On the second trading day this week, Bitcoin lost 2.52% to $3,930.3 by 12:40 AM ET (04:40 GMT).
Ethereum went down 3.87% to $130.96 and Litecoin dropped 6.69% to 53.691 over the last 24 hours. XRP also slid 1.94% to $0.30753. That pushed the market cap down to $131.6 billion from $135 billion the day before.
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Hester Peirce attracted some attention among crypto market watchers again by saying crypto markets should self-regulate when possible and dismissing the idea of government regulations.
“One really important thing to remember is that people regulate each other in their interactions with one another, and that’s the whole purpose of the Bitcoin idea, that it would be a community that would be able to regulate itself,” Peirce said at the MIT Bitcoin Expo 2019 on March 9.
“As problems arise, people in that community are thinking about how to deal with those problems. One model would be to have a government regulator, but I don’t think that’s the only model,” she added.
Dubbed as “crypto mom”, Peirce is known for her pro-Bitcoin stance and she advocates for a lighter regulatory touch when possible. When the SEC rejected a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund application for the second time last year, she published a statement of official dissent.
Elsewhere, a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives proposed a bill to ban the anonymous use of cryptocurrencies. The bill introduced by Representative Phil Stephenson calls for anyone who sends and receives digital tokens to be identified.
“[Texas] may not use a digital currency that is not a verified identity digital currency,” the bill reads. If the bill wins approval, Texas could be the first state in the U.S. to put anonymous use of digital coins to an end.