Investing.com - Cryptocurrency prices were flat on Friday as Bitcoin remained in the $3,600 mark as trading remains sluggish amid very little news.
Bitcoin inched up 0.7% to $3,619.00 as of 8:46 AM ET (13:46 GMT) on the Investing.com Index.
Cryptocurrencies overall were at $121 billion at the time of writing.
Ethereum rose 0.7% to $122.81 and XRP increased 0.7% to $0.30382 while Litecoin was at $42.73, up 2.8%.
The market appears to have priced in the reputational damage done to the crypto industry by the legal battle around the Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX. Some 115,000 users are seeking restitution after the exchange's owner died without revealing the password to the company’s cold wallet.
A Canadian judge on Thursday declined to appoint a law firm to represent Quadriga’s customers but is expected to make a decision by next week.
Three firms have applied to represent users to coordinate with QuadrigaCX as it struggles to repay the $196 million it owes creditors and the C$250 million it owes to clients.
The company is also struggling with paying its legal fees and oversight. Services firm Ernst & Young, which was appointed by the Nova Scotia supreme court to oversee QuadrigaCX, told the court on Thursday that C$250,000 had already been spent of the C$300,000 set aside dedicated to the process.
QuadrigaCX’s struggles began after its CEO Gerald Cotten died unexpectedly in India in early December without leaving the password for access to an offline, or 'cold', wallet. The firm only has access to its hot wallets, which are connected to the internet. However the wallets have less than $1 million, far from the C$180 million ($135.39 million) of digital coins that are frozen in users' accounts.
In other news, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said that JPMorgan’s new blockchain-based initiative “misses the point” of the sector. The bank said Thursday it's launching a “JPM Coin,” which will help the bank use the technology behind digital coins to process transfers within the bank. It's the latest in a line of major banks to use so-called 'utility settlement coins' to cut costs and speed processing of payments.
“Introducing a closed network today is like launching AOL after Netscape’s IPO. 2 years later, and bank coins still aren’t the answer," Garlinghouse said via