Investing.com - Cryptocurrency prices were broadly higher on Monday, with Bitcoin Cash surging ahead of a hard fork.
Bitcoin rose 0.97% to $6,478.60 on the Bitfinex exchange, as of 8:58 AM ET (13:48 GMT).
Cryptocurrencies overall were higher, with the total coin market capitalization at $212 billion at the time of writing, compared to $208 billion on Sunday.
Ethereum,or Ether, increased 4.72% to $211.97 and Litecoin was at $54.071, up 0.91% while XRP rose 2.22% to $0.46749.
An upcoming hard fork also increased the price of Bitcoin Cash, which jumped 20% on Sunday amid news that the crypto is forking. The move was supported by crypto platform Binance, which helped push the price higher.
A split in the coin is scheduled for Nov. 15, when it will fork into two different versions. A hard fork occurs when the code of a virtual code is changed, resulting in a new and older version.
Meanwhile, the government of Taiwan has amended its laws to regulate digital coin transactions.
The amendments to the Money Laundering Control Act and the Terrorism Financing Prevention Act give the country’s financial watchdog the authority to constrain anonymous transactions and demand exchanges require uses register with their real names. If exchanges don't comply, banks can reject anonymous transactions and report them to the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC).
Non-financial companies that violate the rules could be fined more than 50,000 yuan (around $7,256) but less than 1 million yuan (around $144,339).