Reuters
- Bitcoin plummeted as much as 6% on Monday, representing the deepest decline in crypto asset in nearly a month.
- The decline comes after Bitcoin rocketed to record highs above $ 24,200 as adoption among institutional investors and companies like Square, and PayPal increased.
- Hacked reported company Ledger hardware wallets as well as proposed US Treasury rules that would reign in the cryptocurrency likely to be weighed down on investor sentiment.
- Watch bitcoin trade live here.
Bitcoin retreated from record highs on Monday after its digital currency surpassed $ 24,200 for the first time ever.
Helping push bitcoin higher over the year has been more widely adopted among institutional investors and corporations, as evidenced by Square and PayPal’s recent investments in the crypto asset.
But sales of 6% on Monday to just below $ 22,000 represented the deepest fall in nearly a month. The advent of the downturn was likely due to a hack in a popular hardware wallet for crypto users: Ledger.
A database of personal information such as email addresses, phone numbers, and home addresses for more than 270,000 Ledger customers has been published on RaidForums, an online marketplace for buying, selling, and sharing hacked information, according to The Block .
In July, Ledger publicly revealed that it suffered a data breach, compromising that data at least 9,500 customers. That hack over the Summer is probably the source of the much larger data breach, Ledger said in a tweet.
Read more: A new crypto fund CIO that has returned 220% to investors this year explains why bitcoin is at the top of $ 20,000 for the first time ever this week – and shares another digital currency that will become ‘asset of the year’ in 2021
The piece of personal data for Ledger users is likely to resurface painful memories of crypto hacks over the years that have resulted in owners losing real bitcoin, and a reminder that crypto assets are still operating in an environment similar to the wild west with little regulation. .
The Treasury department is trying to change that, with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin unveiling a proposal for new rules over the weekend for those who want to move their bitcoin off exchanges and on to personal wallets.
Users would have to comply with your customer’s identification requirements and provide their personal information about the wallet owner if the amount transferred to the wallet exceeds $ 10,000. One of the key aspects of bitcoin is the anonymity of its users negotiating in the cryptocurrency.
Under the proposed rules, exchanges would be required to report individual transactions or groups that add up to more than $ 10,000 to the Financial Crime Enforcement Network.
Despite the correction in bitcoin, it is still one of the best performing assets in 2020, reporting earnings to date of more than 200%. Bitcoin prevented its losses and was down just 1.5% to about $ 23,000 at 11:10 am
Read more: The head of a $ 2 billion overseeing hedge fund breaks down why we’re in a 61% stock market crash over the next 18-24 months – and shares 3 types of company he’s currently cutting
Internal Markets