Investing.com - Cryptocurrencies traded lower on Monday as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) called for global coordination on the regulation of initial coin offerings (ICO).
Given their cross-border appeal, the OECD called on global regulators to jointly come up with regulatory clarity and a supervisory framework for ICOs as “a stepping stone to their safer use for financing purposes."
The organization stressed that ICOs involve “very high” risks which require a globally standardized set of regulations to avoid money laundering or other criminal activities.
Bitcoin fell 1.22% to $3,550.6 on the Investing.com Index as of 7:19 AM ET (12:19 GMT).
Cryptocurrencies overall were lower, with the total coin market capitalization at $119.7 billion at the time of writing, compared to $121 billion on Friday.
“A delicate balance will need to be achieved in the development or application of regulatory and supervisory requirements which do not deprive the ICO mechanism of its speed and cost benefits, particularly when it comes to smaller size offerings,” OECD said in a report.
Calls for regulation have long been the norm for ICOs although global institutions have made little progress on an international standard for digital assets.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) continues to search for a method to implement a sector-wide set of parameters, but has mostly relied on cease-and-desist orders along with fines, handed down on a case-by-case basis. Regulatory activity has increased with the SEC reportedly taking action in 18 cases related to digital coins last year, up from just five in 2017.
In early January, separate calls were made by European Union regulators such as the European Banking Authority and the European Securities and Markets Authority to create a set of rules and regulation that would be standardized for the entire region.
In other cryptocurrency trading, ethereum, or Ether, decreased 1.66% to $117.25, and Litecoin was at $31.048, off 1.47%, while XRP traded down 0.21% to $0.3199.
Elsewhere, there was criticism for the asset class in general from a senior adviser to the Bank of England, who poured cold water on cryptocurrencies ever replacing fiat currencies issued by central banks.
"I’m not so worried about crytocurrencies,” Huw van Steenis told Bloomberg TV. “They fail the basic tests of financial services. They’re not a great unit of exchange, they don’t hold value, and they’re slower.”