Bitcoin hovers near $8000 level as investors weigh Twitter ban

Bitcoin swung between gains and losses around the $8,000 mark as investors digested the latest developments in a widening social-media crackdown on digital tokens.

The largest cryptocurrency was steady at $7,844.25 as of 9:42 am in London, according to consolidated Bloomberg pricing. Twitter confirmed on Monday it’s banning advertisements for initial coin offerings and token sales on its platform, joining Facebook and Alphabet’s Google on the list of tech giants keeping cryptos at bay. Rival coins Ripple, Ether and Litecoin fell.

Since reaching a peak of almost $20,000 in mid-December at the height of the cryptocurrency frenzy, bitcoin has lost more than half of its value as investors weigh the future of the nascent industry amid intensifying scrutiny. Facebook banned cryptocurrency ads in January and Google said it would outlaw such ads starting in June.

Bitcoin earlier jumped as high as $8,265.87, following a decline on Monday of 8.4 per cent. The digital token has now dropped by about a quarter in March alone.

Also on Monday, Cboe Global Markets, the first US exchange to list bitcoin futures last year, prodded US securities regulators to consider approving crypto exchange-traded funds in a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

While bitcoin futures trading volumes can’t yet support exchange-traded funds, Cboe said it is encouraged by their growth trajectory and that there are “reliable and robust” ways to value Bitcoin and potentially other digital assets.