The roller coaster January for cryptocurrency investors eased for a few hours on Thursday as Bitcoin held steady after roaring back from its first plunge below $10,000 since December.
The largest digital currency climbed 2.1% to $11,620 at 11:34 a.m. in London, Bloomberg composite pricing showed. It held fairly steady for much of the Asia trading day as investors took a breath following a frantic 24 hours in which the digital coin swung through a trading range of $2,600. Rivals ethereum and litecoin were little changed, while Ripple jumped 12%.
“This market is volatile and there is not enough capital in it to stabilize,” Darren Franceschini, chief executive with Blockchain Technologies Consulting, said in an email.
Bitcoin’s gyrations in 2018 has investors, regulators and onlookers debating whether the speculative bubble has popped after a 1,400 percent ascent last year. Jitters across the globe over a potential bloodbath helped wipe about $400 billion off the global market value of digital assets in 10 days through Wednesday.
Read: Did Bitcoin Just Burst? How It Compares to History’s Big Bubbles
While Bitcoin and peers staged multiple comebacks in 2017 following double-digit daily losses, the digital coin has not been able to string together a rally through the first three weeks of this year.
Cryptocurrencies across the board are coming under increasing scrutiny from regulators around the world, with South Korean authorities debating a potential ban on local exchanges while China is widening its crackdown on the industry.
Bixin, one of China’s larger operators for the so-called wallets that hold digital coins, said it was suspending all OTC trading and escrow trading on Wednesday, blaming “uncertainties regarding regulation policies.” No re-start date was set.B
