Investing.com – Major cryptocurrencies traded in the green on Friday morning in Asia, with Bitcoin surpassing $9,700.
Bitcoin rose 3.75% to $9,708.2 by 11:50 PM ET (03:50 AM GMT). Gaining the strongest momentum this year, the digital coin continues to rally this week to test $10,000.
Sharing the same momentum, Ethereum added 4.20% to $279.65, XRP edged up 0.69% to $0.43659, and Litecoin was up 0.45% to $137.72.
The total crypto market cap rose to $298.1 billion from $290 billion.
Japan’s messaging giant LINE is close to winning a regulatory approval to run its cryptocurrency exchange. With the approval, LINE could launch the platform called BitMax in a few weeks, where its 80 million users in Japan can trade crypto coins.
LINE is also waiting for a banking license in Japan, which would allow the messaging giant to create a crypto payment channel for users to shop online. The license is believed to come next year the soonest.
LINE’s crypto exchange in its home country followed the one in Singapore called BitBox, which was launched in July 2018.
The move by LINE and its U.S. peer Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) signifies a huge interest of social media companies in the crypto space. Facebook is launching its own cryptocurrency called Libra, which it claims to be a stablecoin.