Investing.com - Cryptocurrencies headed higher on Friday, looking past a warning from a British regulator that scams were on the rise.
Bitcoin gained 0.77% in the last 24 hours to reach $6,462.20 on the Bitfinex exchange by 10:52 AM ET (14:52 GMT), leading rivals with weekly gains of 5.1%.
In other digital currency trading, Ethereum rose 0.5% to $295.20 in the last 24 hours, paring weekly losses 11.0%. Ripple surged 9.77% to $0.31531, decreasing the weekly decline to 1.3%, while Bitcoin Cash, product of the Bitcoin fork and the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, traded up 2.4% to $542.00, reducing weekly losses to 4.9%.
Money flowed into digital assets on Friday despite a warning from the UK Financial Conduct Authority that cryptocurrencies were not regulated and said it has received a rising number of reports about investment scams that claim to offer high returns.
"UK consumers are being increasingly targeted by cryptocurrency-related investment scams," the FCA said in a statement.
"Cryptocurrency fraudsters tend to advertise on social media, often using the images of celebrities or well-known individuals to promote cryptocurrency investments," it added.
The warning, which the FCA relaunched on its website on Friday, coincided with news that the U.K-based crypto futures exchange and CME Group (NASDAQ:CME) partner, Crypto Facilities, was adding a Bitcoin Cash offering to its services.
The futures contract is the latest addition to its products, which already include futures for rivals bitcoin, ethereum, ripple and litecoin.
In other crypto-related news, Jd.Com (NASDAQ:JD), China’s largest retailer, announced Friday that it is launching a new blockchain technology platform “to help enterprise customers build, host and use their own blockchain applications for more secure, transparent and convenient operations management.”
To date, the company has implemented blockchain tracing for more than 400 brands and 11,000 SKUs on JD.com.