Cryptocurrencies’ prices slipped in Asia’s Wednesday afternoon although South Korea’s Finance Supervisory Service (FSS) hinted a better deal for the crypto industry today.
Bitcoin was trading at $10,714.0 by 1:00am ET on the Bitfinex exchange, down 6.26% over the previous 24 hours.
Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, lost 7.77% at $872.32 on the Bitfinex exchange.
Ripple’s XRP token plunged 10.55% to $0.99000 on the Poloniex exchange.
Meanwhile, Litecoin dived 11.22% lower at $218.79.
A comment by FSS chief Choe Heung-sik took centre stage today as the market regulator changed its tough stance on the digital coin trade to a softer tone.
"The whole world is now framing the outline (for cryptocurrency) and therefore (the government) should rather work more on normalization than increasing regulation," said Choe.
Although Choe’s comment was not a directional driver for the crypto prices today, investors saw the news as positive since the regulator’s change of tone was a stark contrast to the justice minister’s warnings last month that the government was considering to shut down local cryptocurrency exchanges, which caused crypto prices to dive in January and earlier this month.
Elsewhere, Dutch financial services company ING reportedly confirmed in an email today that Bitfinex has a bank account with it. However, ING spokesman Harold Reusken noted that the bank does not provide any services to help their customers engage in any cryptocurrencies trading.