Investing.com – Cryptocurrency prices fell on Tuesday, while reports that the U.S.-based crypto exchange Coinbase is expanding into Japan garnered some attention.
Bitcoin was trading at $7,424.8 by 12:30AM ET (04:30GMT) on the Bitfinex exchange, down 3.7% over the previous 24 hours.
Ethereum, the world’s second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, fell 6.1% at $582.73 on the Bitfinex exchange.
Ripple’s XRP token plunged 7.7% to $0.64302 on the Poloniex exchange.
Meanwhile, Litecoin lost 7.1% to $115.76.
Coinbase, which is operating in 32 countries already, announced on Monday that it would launch an office in Japan and is planning to work with the country’s Financial Services Agency to ensure it is compliant with local regulation.
“As in other markets, we plan to take a deliberate approach to our rollout in Japan, which means working hand-in-hand with the Japanese FSA to ensure compliance with local laws at every stage,” Coinbase said in its announcement.
Elsewhere, short seller Jim Chanos’ comments on Bitcoin raised some eyebrows as he said the virtual coin would collapse in a crisis.
“For those who believe that you need to own digital currency as a store of value in the worst-case scenario, that’s exactly the case in which a digital currency will work the least,” he said in an interview with the Institute for New Economic Thinking on Monday. “The last thing I’d want to own is Bitcoin if the grid goes down.”
“We’re now nine years into this bull market, same as the ’90s, so I suspect that now things are starting to percolate,” he said, singling out Bitcoin. “This is simply a security speculation game masquerading as a technological breakthrough in monetary policy.”