Cryptocurrency prices were steady on Monday, while the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission fined a bitcoin trader for running a fraudulent virtual coin scheme.
Bitcoin inched up 0.94% to $6,472.20 on the Bitfinex exchange, as of 9:03 AM ET (14:03 GMT).
Cryptocurrencies overall were steady with the total coin market capitalization at $213 billion at the time of writing.
Ethereum,or Ether, increased 0.50% to $213.08 and Litecoin was at $51.446, down 0.31% while XRP rose 1/69% to $0.51338.
Arizona resident Joseph Kim admitted to defrauding investors after he misappropriated $600,000 of his previous employer’s bitcoin and litecoin funds to his personal account.
He also told customers that he had left his employer to start his own trading company and told clients he would invest funds in a low-risk strategy when he actually made high-risk trades and lost all $545,000 of his clients funds.
The CFTC fined Kim $1 million, permanently banned him from trading and he was sentenced to 15 months in jail, according to the release.
In other news, technology company IBM (NYSE:IBM) filed a patent which will allow it to use blockchain for science research and records.
The company foresees “integrating a blockchain and data collection and analysis for open scientific research,” according to the patent application.
It’s just the latest of a number of tech and financial companies applying for patents related to blockchain, the technology behind bitcoin and other digital coins