Bitcoin Slips After Frantic Rally as Traders Await Fresh Signals

The roller coaster January for cryptocurrency investors showed no signs of ending on Thursday as Bitcoin swung back to a loss in London trading just hours after staging a recovery above the $10,000 mark.

The largest digital currency was down 2.4 percent to $11,107 at 9:07 a.m. in London, Bloomberg composite pricing showed. Bitcoin held steady for much of the Asia trading day as investors took a breath following a frantic 24 hours in which it swung through a trading range of $2,600. Rivals ethereum and litecoin both fell more than 4 percent while Ripple was up 4.5 percent.

“This market is volatile and there is not enough capital in it to stabilize,” Darren Franceschini, chief executive with Blockchain Technologies Consulting, said in an email.

Bitcoin’s gyrations in early 2018 has investors, regulators and onlookers debating whether the speculative bubble has popped after a 1,400 percent ascent last year. While it staged multiple comebacks in 2017 following double-digit losses, the digital coin has not been able to string together a rally through the first three weeks of this year.

Cryptocurrencies across the board are coming under increasing scrutiny from regulators around the world, with South Korean authorities debating a potential ban on local exchanges while China is widening its crackdown on the industry.

Bixin, one of China’s larger operators for the so-called wallets that hold digital coins, said it was suspending all OTC trading and escrow trading on Wednesday, blaming “uncertainties regarding regulation policies.” No re-start date was set.