© Reuters.

Investing.com – The recovery in Bitcoin paused on Wednesday a day after notching its biggest rally in two weeks, while Ripple XRP rose sharply on signs of growing demand for its blockchain technology.

On the Bitfinex exchange, fell to $14,884.9, up $705, or 4.52%, after recently hitting an all-time high of $19,891. The popular digital currency's market cap fell to $258.26 billion.

Bitcoin gave up some of its gains following a more than 10% rise in the previous session as investors questioned whether bitcoin’s failure to sustain a move higher above a psychological $16,000 level pointed to weak demand.

The mixed start to the week for bitcoin comes amid growing investor concerns over regulatory pressure after Israel Securities Authority chairman Shmuel Hauser said Monday he will propose regulation to ban companies based on bitcoin and other digital currencies from trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

Despite the year-end blip in bitcoin, the popular digital currency boasts a return of about 1600% since the start of the year, outpacing the returns of the traditional benchmarks like the .

Other cryptocurrencies followed bitcoin’s move lower as fell 5.21% to $2,648, after surging above $4000 to a record high of $4,100 last week. Bitcoin Cash was created in August following a split in Bitcoin’s blockchain – the digital ledger which records every bitcoin transaction – in an event know as a ‘hard fork’.

, meanwhile, fell 5.79%% to $264.31 having recently overtook as the fifth most valuable cryptocurrency by market map.

, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, fell 1.64% to $726.70, well below its recent peak of $863 set last week.

, however, bucked the broader trend lower, rising 6.77% to $1.14 amid reports that Tokyo-based financial services company SBI Holdings and its subsidiary SBI Ripple Asia plan to use Ripple’s digital payments technology.