Bitcoin Falls, as XRP Tumbles

Investing.com - Cryptocurrencies were lower on Tuesday, while a report from the Bank for International Settlements found that government talk of regulation can have a negative impact on digital currency prices.

Bitcoin decreased 3.05%% to $6,425.60 on the Bitfinex exchange, as of 9:20 AM ET (13:20 GMT).

Cryptocurrencies overall were lower with the coin market cap of total market capitalization at $208 billion at the time of writing compared to $219 billion on Monday.

Ethereum,or Ether, fell 11.83% to $210.03 while XRP slumped 16.29% to $0.45702 and Litecoin was at $55.282, down 5.55%.

International coordination is the only way to properly regulate the digital currency market, researchers from the BIS argued in a report.

The study, authored by two senior economists at the bank, states that in order to regulation of virtual coins to work, there needs to be cross-border coordination similar to current anti-money laundering standards.

The authors also found that government regulation has an impact on cryptocurrency prices, and tend to have a negative effect when focusing on general bans or treating virtual coins as securities

“News suggesting that cryptocurrencies could be treated as securities also leads to negative returns, probably reflecting the expectation that cryptocurrencies would be regulated more stringently. In contrast, the introduction of a specific, non-security legal framework generates positive returns,” the researchers noted.

In other news, retail giant Walmart (NYSE:WMT) is requiring all of its leafy green suppliers to put their food data on a blockchain by September 2019. The move will help the company prevent E. coli and other type of outbreaks.

Using distributed ledger technology, which is behind digital currencies like Bitcoin, would help locate contamination and which stores were supplied.