Investing.com - Major cryptocurrencies edged up in Asia on Thursday morning despite calls for regulation from the EU and Russia – an area in which the two have found some common ground.
On Thursday morning, Bitcoin traded 0.46% higher to $3,815.8 by 10:04 PM ET (03:04 GMT).
Ethereum was up 0.77% to $135.81, XRP added 0.39% to $0.3115 and Litecoin gained 2.09% to $45.497 over the past 24 hours.
With the digital tokens picking up momentum this week, the crypto market cap rebounded to the $130 billion level after a tumble on Monday.
There have been calls for tightening and enforcing regulations on the crypto industry, but this time they were from the top people in the EU and Russia.
On Wednesday, the chairman of the European Securities and Markets Authority Steven Maijoor said he supports tightening regulation on digital assets and initial coin offerings (ICOs).
“Where crypto assets do not qualify as financial instruments, we are concerned that the absence of applicable financial rules leaves consumers exposed to substantial risks,” Maijoor said at the FinTech Conference 2019 in Brussels.
“This makes it plain to see that we cannot legally qualify crypto assets via a ‘one size fits all’ approach,” he added.
Maijoor also calls for expanding Europe’s Anti-Money Laundering requirements to exchanges between cryptocurrencies, rather than just between digital coin and fiat currency. Apart from this, he proposed extending new regulations to ICOs.
Meanwhile, President Vladimir Putin directly ordered the Russian government to enforce crypto regulations by July 1 this year.
Kremlin.ru, the official website of the President of Russia, released a document that sets out the details. It requires the adoption of federal legislation in order to develop the digital economy, including regulation on civil-law digital settlements and a regulatory framework for digital financial assets.
According to Russian media outlet Rambler, the Russian State Duma plans to review and adopt new crypto regulations in March.