Prices of major cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), fell on December 17. Even Shiba Inu’s (SHIB) listing on Taiwan’s largest exchange BitoEx failed to cheer investors. However, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) were back in news as former US first lady Melania Trump joined the bandwagon. Meanwhile, the Russian central government is mulling banning cryptos and Binance Asia said that it will close its exchange operations in Singapore, according to news reports.
As of 8.22 am, Bitcoin was trading near its day’s low at $47,767.71, which indicated a loss of 2.50 per cent over the last 24 hours. It was the same story with closest rival Ethereum, which was trading at $3970.38 with a loss of 1.40 per cent, coinmarketcap.com data showed.
Algorand, dubbed as the Ethereum killer, was trading at $1.40 and was down by 2.78 per cent. Its market cap stands at $8,835,737,119.
Among other major coins, Binance Coin (BNB) is down by 0.86 per cent at $532.28, Cardano (ADA) is trading near its day’s low at $1.25, indicating a decrease of 3.93 per cent over the last 24 hours, and Solana (SOL) is currently trading with gains of 0.54 per cent at $178.76.
The global crypto market cap is $2.21 trillion, a 2.05 per cent decrease over the last 24 hours. The total crypto market volume over the last 24 hours is $89.31 billion, a 23.04 per cent decrease over the last 24 hours, coinmarketcap.com data showed.
The biggest gainer was onLEXpa, with a massive gain of 15,176.54 per cent at $0.006982, while the top loser was Spice Dao, which saw its entire value diminished to touch zero, indicating a 100 per cent loss.
Meme Coins
Meme coins could not shield themselves from the broader market sell-off. Dogecoin (DOGE) was trading with a loss of 3.54 per cent at $0.1749.
Despite the good news for rival Shiba Inu (SHIB), it failed to cheer up investors' sentiment. Shiba Inu was listed on the BitoEx, Taiwan’s largest crypto exchange platform. This may result in more liquidity for this token. However, prices have not reacted significantly to this news. Instead, as of 8.44 am, it was trading lower by 3.77 per cent at $0.00003294.
ELON is down by 4.08 per cent at $0.000001142 and FLOKI by 7.17 per cent at $0.0001324. Meanwhile, Samoyed Coin (SAMO) is up by 4.08 per cent at $0.04357, but its trading volume was down by a whopping 40.85 per cent.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)
The latest entrant in the NFT space is the former US first lady, Melania Trump. The Melania Trump NFT Platform will be running on the Solana blockchain with SOL as its native token. A part of the sale proceeds will be donated to children in the foster care system.
“I am proud to announce my new NFT endeavour, which embodies my passion for the arts, and will support my ongoing commitment to children through my Be Best initiative,” Trump said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Morris Garage (MG Motors) became the first major automaker to jump into the NFT space. The proceeds of its first-ever NFT sale will, however, go towards community service.
Latest Updates
The Russian central bank wants to ban investments in cryptocurrencies in Russia, seeing risks to financial stability in the rising number of crypto transactions, two financial market sources close to the bank said, according to a Reuters report.
The largest crypto exchange Binance Asia informed in an email about closing its exchange operations in Singapore by February 13, Fortune.com reported.
