With the market cap dropping under the $200 billion mark, cryptocurrencies summed up another poor week.
This price has not been seen on the charts ever since November 2017.
At the beginning of this week, the total market capitalization was standing at around $193 billion, despite reaching the $300 billion price mark at just a few weeks prior.
The previously mentioned numbers are a result of Bitcoin's losses in the past few days. The coin was really close to hitting below the $6,000 mark after days in the red.
The latest lows came shortly after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced it would be extending the deadline for a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) proposal from SolidX and VanEck.
The second largest cryptocurrency on the market, Ethereum (ETH), faced the most severe losses, compared to the other top digital assets.
Its price dropped below the $300 mark, which is a nine-month price low. At press time, Ethereum hovers slightly above $290.
In the previous week, the top 10 cryptocurrencies were all in the red, with price drops up to 30 percent.
Some of them noticed monthly loses of 33 percent. However, despite the relatively poor situation, Bitcoin continues growing in market dominance.
This week, the coin currently holds around 51 percent of the total market and marked a constant climb during the last few weeks.
On a more positive note, Monero has once again risen in the top 10 list, after some time. Despite the current 10-month low, this digital asset climbed a few places up following a 6 percent jump.
The privacy-based coin is appreciated by the crypto community, mostly because of its security properties.
Famous Actor Arrested for Crypto Scam Worth $24 Million
A famous Thai actor, Jiratpisit "Boom" Jaravijit, was arrested in Bangkok last week after allegations that he was involved in a money laundering scheme worth $24 million.
Jaravijit, together with his siblings, were part of a larger fraud operation, accumulating the worth of over 5,000 Bitcoins in the process.
Allegedly, the accused promised to purchase shares in companies that invested in Dragon Coin, a decentralized cryptocurrency.
Instead, they withdrew Bitcoins from the victims' e-wallets and then converted it to Thai Baht.
The 27-year-old television and commercials actor was later released, after paying the $60,000 bail.
Cryptocurrency fraud schemes are not uncommon, even though in the last five years, the percentage of criminal activity in this digital world has decreased tremendously, going from 90 to only 10 percent.
The latest findings show that cryptocurrencies are not mostly used by criminals on the dark web. Instead, these illicit activities have been replaced by Bitcoin price speculations.
US Treasury Department Is Working on a Platform for Reporting Suspicious Crypto Activities
Kenneth Blanco, director of the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), revealed that an information-sharing platform for virtual currency exchanges is in the making.
The platform would be a channel for the concerns of illegal activities on this matter.
During the recent Chicago-Kent Block Legal Tech Conference, Blanco explained that the agency is creating a "FinCEN Exchange" program.
It will be the outcome of a collaboration with both law enforcement agencies and partners in the private sector.
According to Blanco's speech, the crypto industry needs to take action on this as well, and cooperate with the authorities in helping identify and mitigate illegal activities.
This will protect the investors while also minimizing the negative perception that cryptocurrencies are the invention of the dark web, Blanco added.
FinCEN is an agency within the U.S. Treasury Department jurisdiction.
Currently, on a monthly basis, they receive approximately 1,500 Suspicious Activity Reports related to these decentralized digital assets.
These figures have grown significantly since 2014 when the agency set administrative changes that put cryptocurrency exchanges in their jurisdiction.
That's it for our summary of this week's major crypto news headlines. This is the seventh post in our new crypto news series. See previous installments of our weekly crypto market series below:
