Investing.com - Cryptocurrencies were mixed on Monday, with Bitcoin flat as trade remained thin due to the U.S. holiday.
Bitcoin rose 0.02% to $7,2327.40 on the Bitfinex exchange, as of 7:31 AM ET (11:31 GMT). Trade was expected to be light, as traders in the U.S. celebrated the Labor Day holiday.
Cryptocurrencies overall were slightly lower, with the coin market cap of total market capitalization was at $235 billion at the time of writing compared to $239 billion on Sunday.
Ethereum, the second biggest alternative currency by market cap, fell 1.03% to $287.87 while XRP, the third largest virtual currency, decreased 1.17% to $0.33441 and Litecoin was at $64.762, up 0.14%.
Japan’s Financial Services Agency is introducing stricter registration rules for cryptocurrency exchanges, The Japan Times reported on Sunday. The rules are being introduced “to see whether they [crypto exchanges] are properly conducting risk management.” The changes include more application questions, minutes of board meetings, and reviews of the companies shareholders.
Japan was the first country in the world to legalize digital currency exchanges with its licensing regime introduced last year. After a series of exchange hacks, the regulator has closely monitored existing virtual coin companies and has given business improvement orders to several.
In other news, web-browser Mozilla Firefox will soon block cryptocurrency mining malware. As the digital coins have grown in popularity, security remains one of the biggest hurdles to the industry.
“Sites have deployed cryptomining scripts that silently mine cryptocurrencies on the user's device. Practices like these make the web a more hostile place to be. Future versions of Firefox will block these practices by default,” Mozilla vice president of product Nick Nguyen said in a blog post last week.