{"id":230617,"date":"2018-03-09T14:19:55","date_gmt":"2018-03-09T12:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=230617"},"modified":"2018-03-09T14:19:55","modified_gmt":"2018-03-09T12:19:55","slug":"bitcoins-bad-week-is-getting-worse-as-selloff-deepens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/230617\/bitcoins-bad-week-is-getting-worse-as-selloff-deepens\/","title":{"rendered":"Bitcoin’s bad week is getting worse as selloff deepens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bitcoin\u2019s rough week looks set to end on a sour note. The virtual currency fell 4.2% to $8,936.50 at 6:53 a.m. in New York Friday, after earlier losing as much as 10%.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin has slumped more than 20% this week amid increased regulatory scrutiny in the US and Japan, an attempted theft at one of the biggest trading venues, and news that the bankruptcy trustee for Mt. Gox has started selling the now-defunct exchange\u2019s holdings to repay creditors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe screen is flashing red today and people are getting fearful,\u201d said Caleb Yap, co-founder of Singapore Bitcoin Club.<\/p>\n

\u201cWeak hands are definitely wanting to sell. If Mt. Gox can dump $400 million of Bitcoin just like that and there\u2019s still billions left, the fear is when is the big drop coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mt. Gox\u2019s bankruptcy trustee, Nobuaki Kobayashi, disclosed on Wednesday in Tokyo that he sold about $400 million of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash since late September, part of the hoard left behind when the exchange collapsed four years ago.<\/p>\n

Kobayashi is studying further sales of the $1.8 billion remaining.<\/p>\n

Signs of growing regulatory scrutiny have added to investor jitters. On Thursday, Japan\u2019s Financial Services Agency ordered two exchanges to halt operations for a month and penalized four others.<\/p>\n

That announcement came just hours after a warning from the US Securities and Exchange Commission that many online trading platforms should register with the agency.<\/p>\n

Around the same time, Binance, one of the world\u2019s biggest crypto exchanges, said it had been the target of a \u201clarge-scale phishing and stealing attempt.\u201d<\/p>\n

While it said \u201call funds are safe,\u201d Binance noted that it was unable to reverse some trades from accounts targeted by the hackers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are all growing pains,\u201d said SJ Oh, a Hong Kong-based trader at Octagon Strategy Ltd. \u201cAnd while hurtful today, the fact that regulators are cracking down will be good for the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Read: Massive drop in searches for Bitcoin on Google<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bitcoin\u2019s rough week looks set to end on a sour note.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":194070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[5537],"class_list":["post-230617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-bitcoin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230617"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":230623,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230617\/revisions\/230623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}