Pressure on bitcoin showed no signs of letting up on Friday, as the No. 1 cryptocurrency stumbled further below $9,000 to reach fresh November lows.
Bitcoin BTCUSD, -10.56% was most recently changing hands at $8,579.31, down 5%, according to research and news site CoinDesk.com. Bitcoin moved below $9,000 for the first time since November on Thursday amid signs that governments around the world are looking to tighten up regulations on trading.
Ether coins on the Ethereum blockchain tumbled 10% to $933.85, according to CoinDesk. That marks the first fall below $1,000 in more than a week.
Bitcoin has slumped about 27% this week to its current level, from a recent high of $11,926.41 reached on Saturday.
Kicking off a fresh wave of selling, India’s finance minister Arun Jaitley came down hard on cryptocurrencies Thursday, as he said the government does not see them as a form of legal tender, according to media reports.
Addressing Parliament during an annual budget announcement, he said Indian officials would “take all measures to eliminate use of these crypto-assets in financing illegitimate activities or as part of the payment system.”
And Facebook Inc.’s FB, +3.32% ban of ads on cryptocurrencies earlier in the week has cast its own shadow over the asset class. Meanwhile, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission reportedly issued subpoenas last month to the largest cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex and sister company Tether. Tether Limited mints coins that are pegged one-to-one to U.S. dollars.
Read: How Bitfinex, Tether are raising eyebrows in the cryptocurrency market
“Various regulatory pressures are building, from Facebook to India. But there does also appear to be significant concern about Tether amid intense scrutiny of its ‘dollar convertibility’ and this is enough to give bears the upper hand at the moment,” said Neil Wilson, senior market analyst at ETX Capital, in a note to clients.
February bitcoin futures on the CBOE XBTG8, -9.14% were down 5.6% at $8,570, while those on the CME BTCG8, -8.97% were seeing a similar drop, down to $8,560.