Investing.com – Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies slipped on Monday, despite reports that a French official said crypto should not be regulated were cited as supportive earlier.
Bitcoin was trading at $6,702.4 by 10:43AM ET (02:43 GMT) on the Bitfinex exchange, down 0.7% over the previous 24 hours.
Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, slipped 0.6% to $481.6 on the Bitfinex exchange.
Ripple’s XRP token fell 1.2% to $0.47640 on the Poloniex exchange.
Meanwhile, Litecointraded 3% lower to $81.861.
Jean-Pierre Landau, the head of a government cryptocurrency task force to investigate French blockchain regulatory policy, said in the latest official report that cryptocurrency should not be regulated. He also highlighted the dangers of defining cryptocurrencies in the wrong class.
“The danger is three-pronged: that of freezing the rapid evolution of technology in legislation, that of failing to grasp the real nature of the object we intend to regulate and that of pushing innovation towards regulatory avoidance. On the contrary, regulation should be technologically neutral, and in order to become so, address the actors and not the products themselves.”
It was reported in April that France slashed the cryptocurrency tax rate from 45% to 19%.
In other news, The Korea Times reported that South Korea is following G20 demands to establish “unified regulations” for the digital asset industry, while officials also confirmed the government is not opposed to cryptocurrencies
“Establishing unified rules is a complicated issue given the broader range of assessments between government agencies. This is why the country needs close international cooperation as it is still in the early stages of fine-tuning guidelines,” a government official said in a publication released by the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) and the Financial Services Commission (FSC), the two regulators who oversee financial policies in South Korea.
However, FSC and FSS also noted the government remains pessimistic on token issuers and ICOs, as it is “difficult to value them as financial assets” and that they have a speculation-driven pricing nature.