At the end of 2016 cryptocurrency could do little to lead bitcoin’s growth in 2017 but after months of speculation, Bitcoin broke its own record reaching $10,000, marking a historic day.
This year, however, it came back down and hit the $7,000 mark again only in December. Despite cryptocurrency’s dominance in the cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin still has an uphill struggle to gain further.
Amid this, the US Securities and Exchange Commission rejected four exchanges’ applications to register as financial services companies and refused the registration of two cryptocurrency-related startups.
If you remember, the SEC rejected two initial coin offerings (ICOs) that took the cryptocurrency markets by storm in 2017.
Last year, ‘Token Sales’ became so popular that the SEC feared it could bring the cryptocurrency markets to a complete halt.
The SEC has also taken an interest in digital currency and blockchain technologies as it issues preliminary examinations into 21 crypto exchanges. However, the regulator doesn’t see any big impact if it would allow bitcoin futures contracts.
But cryptocurrency lovers are not standing by silently as they still hold some dreams for the year. They see cryptocurrency taking back the market to the past days when it wasn’t considered to be the biggest threat to finance.
The SEC recently said it is planning to talk to the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq about them extending their trading hours so they can take bitcoin transactions in a bid to address its concerns, CNBC reported.
The SEC has asked the exchanges to explore trading bitcoin futures as there are growing concerns the digital currency is not backed by anything and can cause market chaos.
Experts also predict the blockchain technology and digital currency could become one of the major drivers of the US economy in the next two decades. And cryptocurrency could even take over the market by 2021 and ultimately defeat fiat currencies.
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