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Bitcoin Breaks $4,000; Crypto Rises

Published 18/03/2019, 02:57 pm
Updated 18/03/2019, 03:43 pm
© Reuters.

© Reuters.

Investing.com - Bitcoin rallied to a three-week high to move past $4,000 over the weekend and investors remained bullish as the week opened in Asia. Other major cryptocurrencies also traded in the green.

On Monday morning, Bitcoin added 0.81% to $4,019.6 by 11:05 PM ET (03:05 AM GMT). After hovering below $4,000 since Feb. 24, the digital coin gained on Saturday with trading volume surpassing $11 billion for the first time in months.

Ethereum gained 1.43% to $140.86, XRP was up 0.29% to $0.3178, and Litecoin rose 1.53% to $61.687 on Monday morning.

The bullish sentiment sent the crypto market cap higher to $140.9 billion.

Price-stable cryptocurrencies were in the limelight over the weekend. Senior advisor for digital assets at the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) Valerie Szczepanik said stablecoins “could raise issues under securities laws”. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies specifically designed to minimize price volatility.

In Szczepanik’s words, the digital token is deemed a security when buyers expect somebody else is going to be holding or guaranteeing a profit, or holding the price at a certain level.

Stablecoins hold stable values, with market prices pegged to another stable asset such as the U.S. dollar to counter high volatility in valuations. Examples are the U.S. dollar-backed Tether and TrueUSD.

“I’ve seen stablecoins that purport to control price through some kind of pricing mechanism, whether it’s tied to the issuance, creation or redemption of another type of digital asset tied to it, or whether it is controlled through supply and demand in some way to keep the price within a certain band,” Szczepanik said on Friday.

Meanwhile, the crypto space in Asia was digesting news that Chinese insurance giant Ping An is collaborating with Ethereum-based decentralized artificial intelligence (AI) startup SingularityNET.

The two companies will work on optical character recognition, computer vision and model training. The news garnered some attention as Ping An is said to be the world’s most valuable insurance company.

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