Bitcoin Daily: Twitter’s Crypto Ban, VCs Plow Cash Into Crypto

Bitcoin tumbled approximately 7 percent on Monday (March 26) below the $8,000 level, CNBC reported. The fall came amid weeks of regulatory scrutiny and tightening of advertising policies by tech companies such as Facebook and Google. And Twitter’s announcement that it would institute a ban on crypto ads “is likely a significant contributor to the steep sell-off,” Timothy Tam, co-founder of CoinFi, told CNBC. Bitcoin was trading at $7879.74 as of 11:19 p.m., according to CoinDesk.

And that Twitter ban is scheduled to take effect on Tuesday (March 27), Bloomberg reported. “Advertisement of initial coin offerings (ICOs) and token sales will be prohibited globally,” a Twitter spokesperson told Bloomberg in an e-mail.

In crypto mining news, Symantec said the detection of coinminers – or programs that generate cryptocurrencies – surged by 8,500 percent in 2017, Investopedia reported. While coinminers can mine cryptocurrencies without a user’s permission, there are legitimate uses for such software. Salon, for example, presented coinminers as an alternative to ad-blockers for its readers this year.

And chipmakers such as AMD and Nvidia may face competition from chips designed for digital currency, CNBC reported. As a result, Susquehanna downgraded its rating from neutral to negative for AMD shares – and lowered the stock’s price target.

In investment news, Cboe wants U.S. regulators to move forward with bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF), Reuters reported. The news comes a few months after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said several issues needed to be studied before bitcoin ETFs could come to market.

And a Goldman Sachs-backed crypto startup is in the green, Bloomberg reported. Circle Internet Finance Ltd. said that it is now profitable, and has brought on an executive from Boxed to help it with finance and risk.

In other news, Litecoin tumbled nearly 10 percent after news surfaced that LitePay shut down, CNBC reported. The situation prompted Litecoin creator Charlie Lee to apologize for promoting LitePay. “Like everyone else, we got too excited about something that was too good to be true and we optimistically overlooked many of the warning signs,” he said in a tweet.