Investing.com – Bitcoin fell below the $8,000 mark on Friday after U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said on Thursday that it stood by its decision to reject an exchange’s request to list a cryptocurrency ETF.
Bitcoin was trading at $7,931.8 by 12:20AM ET (04:20 GMT) on the Bitfinex exchange, down 3.7% in the last 24 hours.
Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, was down 2.4% to $464.57 on the Bitifinex exchange.
Ripple’s XRP token traded 2.4% lower to $0.45282 on the Poloniex exchange.
Meanwhile, Litecoin also lost 3.7% and traded at 83.713 on Thursday.
The SEC announced on Thursday that it is rejecting the rule change needed for a fund run by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss to start trading, citing concerns about market manipulation.
The U.S. regulator said in a 92-page reports that the bitcoin ETF proposed by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss would not be sufficiently protected from manipulation.
"Regulated bitcoin-related markets are in the early stages of their development," the SEC said, adding that it "cannot...conclude that bitcoin markets are uniquely resistant to manipulation."
“Despite today’s ruling, we look forward to continuing to work with the SEC and remain deeply committed to bringing a regulated bitcoin ETF to market and building the future of money,” Cameron Winklevoss said in a statement.
Bitcoin jumped almost 40% this month amid rumors that an approval for the first Bitcoin ETF could come as soon as August. At least four requests from other exchanges that want to list Bitcoin ETFs are pending.
“There’s no way you could not interpret this as a bad sign,” Eric Balchunas, a senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence said.
Meanwhile, CME Group (NASDAQ:CME) CEO Terry Duffy said in an interview on Thursday that the company is not going to list more crypto-related contracts in the near future.
“Bitcoin futures might have been the most controversial launch of a product,” Duffy said. “I will not just put products up there to see where they’re going to go,” he added. “I will take a wait and see approach with Bitcoin for now.”