Bitcoin Falls, Ethereum Down 11%; Ripple Crypto Product to Go Live Next Month

Investing.com – Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices fell on Tuesday, with Ethereum and Litecoin down more than 11%. Ripple hinted that its cryptocurrency product xRapid would go live “in the next month or so.”

Bitcoin traded 3.6% lower to $6,249.9 at 12:20AM ET (04:20 GMT) on the Bitifinex exchange.

Ethereum plunged 11.5% to $196.13 in the previous 24 hours.

XRP also slid 3.1% to $0.27244 on the Poloniex exchange, while Litecoin slumped 11.7% at $50.816.

Sagar Sarbhai, head of regulatory relations for Asia-Pacific and the Middle East at Ripple, said on Monday that the company is aiming to launch xRapid, a product that helps bank speed up transactions by using XRP, “next month or so.”

“I am very confident that in the next one month or so you will see some good news coming in where we launch the product live in production,” Sarbhai said of xRapid in an interview with CNBC

Sarbhai then added that he thought the regulatory environment for blockchain and cryptocurrency technology was improving, as global regulators and authorities began to see the benefits of crypto.

“A couple of years ago the narrative was: blockchain good, crypto bad,” he told CNBC. “What we’re now seeing is more and more regulators, policymakers taking the whole space in one conjunction,” he said.

“So, I think that narrative thankfully is now changing because policymakers, regulators are seeing that there is a strong benefit that digital assets, cryptocurrencies bring in.”

In other news, platform exchange Coinbase is planning to hire 130 employees in its New York office by the end of next year, bringing the total staff to 150. The move is part of the companies plan to target institutional investors, Adam White, general manager of Coinbase, said.

“When we saw the market begin to correct, which we all expected, institutions didn’t lose interest. It was exactly the opposite. They look at it as an opportunity to enter when things are not too frothy,” he said.

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