Investing.com - Cryptocurrencies were trading mostly higher on Friday, though Bitcoin was experiencing difficulty joining in and continuing its rally for a second consecutive day.
The largest digital currency by market cap, known for its volatility, spent most of early trading on Friday wavering around the unchanged even as similar rivals were registering solid gains.
Bitcoin dived from $10,000 at the beginning of February down to as low as $6,000 following clampdowns in China and South Korea and concerns that more regulators would follow suit.
Cryptocurrencies in general found some support this week as comments from the Commodity Future Trading Commission chairman Christopher Giancarlo and Securities and Exchange Commission chief Jay Clayton unexpectedly made comments that weren’t as negative as many investors had feared in testimony to the Senate.
“We owe it to this new generation to respect their enthusiasm for virtual currencies, with a thoughtful and balance response, and not a dismissive one,” Giancarlo said Tuesday, when asked by Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton about the value of the technology underlying cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. “It's important to remember that if there were no bitcoin, there would be no distributed ledger technology," he added.
“We may be back with our friends from Treasury and the Fed to ask for additional legislation,” Clayton said when asked whether Congress needed to act on virtual currencies.
Yet jitters continue to weigh on overall sentiment as global regulators step up efforts to increase oversight of virtual currencies.
Gibraltar will introduce the world's first regulations for initial coin offerings (ICOs) with dedicated rules for the cryptocurrency sector whose fast growth has triggered concern among central bankers, according to a report released on Friday.
Like many other world regulators, the country noted it was concerned about financial stability and protecting consumers. So far global regulators have done little more than to adopt a patchwork approach to ICOs, ranging from bans in China to applying existing securities rules in the U.S.
Stellar gains in the sector grabbed market headlines and the attention of regulators concerned about an industry that was largely unregulated. The uncertainty of how much governments would attempt to clamp down on activity formed a major part of the bearish argument against investment in digital currencies.
At 10:22AM ET (15:22GMT), Bitcoin was back in negative territory, dipping 0.2% to $8,430.10 and on track losses of around 6% in the last seven days.
By descending market cap, Ethereum gained 4.4% to $852.84, but still registered losses of around 11% since a week ago, Ripple jumped 17.5% to $0.8930, while Bitcoin offshoot
Bitcoin Cash showed a better weekly performance with gains of more than 11%. It was last trading up 6% to $1,281.00.