The beating in the cryptocurrency arena continues.
Bitcoin, the grandfather of all cryptocurreny, plunged 10% in trading on Tuesday. It headlined what was a red day across the entire sector.
The drop in price was attributed to the decision by the SEC to delay the decision regarding an application to set up a Bitcoin ETF submitted by VanEck and SolidX.
Leading up to this, the market was looking for a decision.
Wall Street has repeatedly tried to get the SEC to agree to let institutions get involved in the cryptocurrency sector, but, so far, have been twarted. The Commission is steadfast with the view although one commissioner did break ranks recently.
Tuesday's trading saw a price drop of $1.000 or a lot of $14 billion in market cap. The losses continued into Wednesday.
The decision by the SEC means there will be another 7 weeks before they take the application up again. They set a day of Sept 30 to look at it again.
This goes against the digital community which was hoping for a favorable ruling by mid-August. This obviously will not happen.
Bitcoin is leading the charge down. Since the all-time highs earlier in the year, cryptocurrency lost roughly $600 billion. The market cap is now around $225 billion.
Alt-coins might be in worse shape than Bitcoin. In spite of the loss, the percentage that Bitcoin makes of the total market cap jumped to 49%. This is about a 10% increase in 2018.
Many expect that if Bitcoin cannot take the $8,000 level quickly, the trend will further push it down. There are forecasts of new lows for the year.
The volatile asset appears unable to gain any sustained upward momentum.
The next 7 weeks could be more of the same.