Investing.com - Cryptocurrencies were lower across the board on Thursday as regulatory bodies from the U.S. to China moved to block investments, souring bullish sentiment.
With the exception of Tether, which inched up 0.06% by 10:36 AM ET (14:36 GMT), all of the top 25 digital currencies by market capitalization were in the red, with losses ranging from 3% to 9%.
The largest digital asset by market cap, Bitcoin, lost 3.23% in the last 24 hours to reach $6,446.80 on the Bitfinex exchange.
Meanwhile, Ethereum fell 4.12% to $273.71 in the last 24 hours, Ripple slumped 5.64% to $0.32137, while Bitcoin Cash, product of the Bitcoin fork and the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, traded down 4.69% to $522.66.
The selloff was sparked by news late Wednesday that the U.S. Securities and Exchange (SEC) rejected nine proposals for Bitcoin Exchange Traded Funds.
The SEC expressed concern about fraud and manipulation of bitcoin markets, and said that the proposals had not met the regulator’s requirement "that a national securities exchange's rules be designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices. Among other things, the Exchange has offered no record evidence to demonstrate that bitcoin futures markets are 'markets of significant size.'”
The reports came after the regulator cited similar concerns and rejected the Winklevloss ETF in July that would have traded physical bitcoin.
So far, the SEC has yet to approve a cryptocurrency-based ETF. The regulator announced in July that it postponed a decision on approving VanEck ETF until September 30.
Additionally, China, one of the largest sources of crypto demand, was reported to be moving to block more than 100 overseas crypto exchanges from offering trading services to domestic investors.
According to Shanghai Securities Times, the China National Fintech Risk Rectification Office had identified the IP address of 124 foreign trading platforms that it was planning to block access to as it steps up efforts to monitor the commercial used of cryptocurrencies.
The move was expected to thwart companies that had moved their business overseas when the People’s Bank of China formally banned initial coin offerings back in 2017.