Those brave crypto traders who remember with angst the great Bitcoin crash from mid-January 2018 will now have to deal with a dreaded sequel.
Bitcoin dipped again below the $10,000 mark, taking all other digital coins along for the slide. Bad regulation news from South Korea, may be to blame. Facebook also updated its advertising policies to ban any crypto ads whatsoever. But it’s not all bad news.
So what happened?
South Korea
Bitcoin’s value dropped below $10,000 on Tuesday, just South Korea’s new cryptocurrencies trading rules went into effect. Put succinctly, you now have to use your real identity when trading Bitcoin or anything on a Korean exchange. Furthermore, as CCN explains, foreign investors are prohibited from accessing Korean markets.
The Korean crypto exchange business was booming last year, offering even better prices than other international exchanges. That explains the ban on foreign investors. As for requiring users to link their trading accounts with real bank accounts, that’s meant to prevent crimes like money laundering.
Facebook, meanwhile, announced on Tuesday that it’ll ban all ads that promote cryptocurrencies, binary options, and initial coin offerings. That’s because some of those ads promote deceitful products that can harm the user:
We want people to continue to discover and learn about new products and services through Facebook ads without fear of scams or deception. That said, there are many companies who are advertising binary options, ICOs and cryptocurrencies that are not currently operating in good faith.
The policy may change in the future, as Facebook implements new ways of discovering potentially harmful ads. Facebook’s announcement also dropped on Tuesday, but it’s unlikely it had such a significant impact on the market as regulation news from Korea. Still, it proves that crypto business is facing plenty of scrutiny from all sorts of organizations.
The good news
Yes, there’s good news too. South Korea firmly denied plans to ban cryptocurrency trading entirely, Reuters reports.
“There is no intention to ban or suppress cryptocurrency (market),” South Korea’s finance minister Kim Dong-yeon said on Wednesday. It might be a while until Bitcoin recovers, but this is definitely good news.
Also good news is that Samsung, which is selling more chips than ever, according to its latest financial results, is moving into the ASIC-making business. ASICs, for those people unaware of them, are special chips that power computers whose only purpose is mining Bitcoin and other cryptocoins.
Per Digitimes making ASICs for Bitcoin miners may be a new growth driver for Samsung. TSMC, meanwhile, also landed big orders for ASICs, according to the same site.
Bitcoin right now
Bitcoin recovered to over $10,200, but that still represents a more than 7% drop compared to the previous day, according to data compiled by CoinMarketCap:
Most coins are down, anywhere from 3% to 13%, including popular ones like Ethereum, Ripple, and Bitcoin Cash. Some of the coins you’re barely aware of might be having an even worst day than the cool ones. The second bloodbath of January might not be over yet, but we have no way of knowing which way the market is going to swing next.
